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Book Li 6 6 


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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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JOCK BAREFOOT 

















He went along as though he had been left 

a fortune. 







JOCK 

BAREFOOT 


By 

MAUD LINDSAY 


Pictured by 

JANE LINTON 



► 9 

LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 

1939 

*=- ^ ^ ^ <JO i 


BOSTON 


NEW YORK 

















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'<1 


Copyright 1939, by 


LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re¬ 
produced in any form without permission in writing 
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes 
to quote brief passages in connection with a review 
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
NORWOOD PRESS-NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. 




132705 


To the one bonny lassie and two braw laddies who 
are my best listeners and critics. 

Elizabeth Nathan, Robert Lindsay Nathan, Jr., 

and Nathan Drisdale 

Endure fort 

Motto of Lindsay Clan 


Acknowledgments are gratefully made to the following 
publications for release of material that appeared in their 
papers. 

The Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville, Tennessee 
The Picture Story Paper, Cincinnati, Ohio 
The Mayflower, Boston, Mass. 


FOREWORD 


The story of Jock Barefoot grew from a legend 
which I found in a history of my own people; “The 
Lives of the Lindsays” by Lord Alexander Lindsay, 
Sixth Earl of Balcarres and the brother of Lady Anne 
Lindsay Barnard who wrote the famous ballad “Auld 
Robin Grey.” 

I have been to Scotland and know the charms of its 
countryside but the atmosphere of my story I owe to 
my father, Robert Burns Lindsay, who was born and 
lived through boyhood in a little Scotch village in that 
section of the Lowlands made famous by Walter Scott. 

Another Scotchman, Dr. George Lang, now of the 
University of Alabama, hearing that I was writing 
Jock Barefoot hastened in true Scotch fashion to send 
me a helpful book, “The Glamour of the Glen” by 
Dr. William McConachie, from which I got informa¬ 
tion for the natural setting of the story. And Hugh 
Miller, a noted Scotch writer of the early nineteenth 
century, initiated me into the mysteries of fairies and 
their like through his “Scottish Scenes and Legends” 
published in 1835. 


IX 


X 


FOREWORD 


There is a glen called The Glen of the Fairies. 
The tree, from which the real Jock Barefoot is sup¬ 
posed to have broken a branch, actually grew to such 
a size that in its prime it was forty-three feet in circum¬ 
ference ! 

Maud Lindsay 

Sheffield, Alabama 
Dec. 30, 1938 


CHAPTER I 


If Jock Barefoot had known, as he climbed the hill 
to the Laird’s house, all that would happen before he 
came that way again, he might not have been in such 
high spirits. As it was he went along as if he had just 
been left a fortune, and no wonder. Any boy who was 
trusted by Mistress Margot, the postmistress and sweet¬ 
shop-keeper of Wraye, to take a letter to the Laird had 
a right to be pleased, and proud too. 

The letter was pinned securely in a pocket of his 
coat and he was already planning how the sixpence 
fee, which he was sure to get for the errand, should be 
spent. First he would buy a fine new taw for he was a 
great marble player. Then, maybe a bag of sweets or 
cracknuts to share with his playfellows. And then 
something special, a ribbon or a kerchief, for Kirsty 
the minister’s little daughter who was always sharing 
with him. Yes, it was a very fortunate thing that he 
had chosen this morning to wade in the mud puddle 
directly opposite Mistress Margot’s shop, else it might 
be Robin Mucklewraith or Jamie Ferguson or Davy 


•3 


i 4 JOCK BAREFOOT 

Davit who was trudging up the hill and making plans. 

Robin had pretended that he would not have gone 
on such an errand if it had been offered to him twenty 
times over on account of the Laird’s temper. 

“You’re as likely to get a clout on the head as a six¬ 
pence,” he had told Jock, but that was only because he 
was envious. If the Laird did have a terrible temper, 
what difference would that make to Jock? All he had 
to do was to hand the letter to the Laird’s steward, An¬ 
drew MacAndrew MacPherson, get his sixpence— 
it might even be a shilling—and come away. 

He thrust his toes into every soft ridge of earth left 
by cart wheels along the road, and sang at top of his 
voice a foolish song that he liked for its nonsensical 
words: 

Come dance a jig with Granny’s pig. 

Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy. 

Come dance a jig with Granny’s pig, 

Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie. 
Rowdy, dowdy-O. 

What did he care what Robin Mucklewraith said, 
though he did wonder at the Laird. Why should a man 
who owned a house as big as a castle, and almost the 
whole village of Wraye besides, to say nothing of 
moorlands where the curlews called and pasture lands 


JOCK BAREFOOT 15 

for blackfaced sheep, fields for oats and barley and 
even a glen where fairies were supposed to live, go 
ranting and roaring if his porridge were too hot or too 
cold, or his dinner too early or too late, or maybe for 
nothing at all as folk declared he did? 

Everybody was of the opinion that Andrew Mac- 
Andrew MacPherson led an unhappy life with the 
Laird when he was at home. Though for that matter 
the Laird was seldom there. He had a fine house in 
Edinboro’ Town and another in London, and he was 
fond of traveling in foreign lands. He had gotten 
home only the day before, after so long an absence that 
Jock, who had never seen him except in his carriage 
on his rare visits to Wraye, could scarcely remember 
how he looked. 

Robin Mucklewraith, who thought he knew every¬ 
thing, said that he was as tall as a giant, and strong 
enough to carry his great Derby ram over his shoulder. 
But Jock turned up his nose at this. 

Robin said, too, that there was just one thing that 
the Laird was afraid of—fairies. You could not have 
gotten him into his own glen, according to Robin, and 
however he had found this out it was likely to be true. 
There was nobody in the village who would dare go to 
the Glen of the Fairies, even in broad daylight, unless 
it was the minister. 


16 JOCK BAREFOOT 

The minister did not believe in The Little Good 
People, as it was safer to call fairies, and neither did 
he believe in the tales about the Laird. Stories grow in 
the telling he always said, and he insisted, too, that 
the Laird had a kind heart in spite of his quick tem¬ 
per. 

“Nobody in Wraye is ever driven for his rent,” he 
pointed out. But everybody else gave Andrew Mac- 
Andrew MacPherson the credit for that. Anyway it 
was a good thing for the village people that the steward 
was there to stand between them and the Laird, and pay 
out sixpences or shillings. 

Jock began to run, now, for the gateway of the 
Laird’s place was in sight, and he was eager to get his 
errand done before anybody else had time to buy the 
marble that he had set his heart on. It was a blue one 
with one white spot. 

He had never been inside the gateway, for the great 
iron gates were always locked when the Laird was 
away, but he had often peeped in to see the fountains 
and statues and trees in the courtyard. One of the trees 
was worth a thousand pounds, or at least it was told 
that the Laird would not take that much in gold for it. 
He had brought it from across the seas to plant by his 
gates, though his own woods were filled with trees just 
as bonny. And when he was off on his travels and ad- 


JOCK BAREFOOT 17 

ventures the steward had to write letters to tell how it 
was growing. 

Somebody or something had broken one of its 
branches this morning, and the broken piece lay di¬ 
rectly in Jock’s way. He picked it up as he passed and 
took it into the yard with him. Now that he was there 
he felt a little abashed by his fine surroundings. Per¬ 
haps it would have been better to have brought Robin 
along—for all of his talk he’d have jumped at the 
chance—but it was too late to think of that now. Jock 
would have to get through his errand alone, and to 
keep up his courage he slashed at the pebbles on the 
graveled walk and whistled “The Campbells are com¬ 
ing” which was the bravest tune he could remember 
at the moment. He had scarcely begun it when he 
heard a great voice roaring behind him: 

“STOP! STOP!” And when he turned whom 
should he see but the Laird, for it could be no other, 
coming towards him in a towering rage. “Scamp! 
Rogue! Trespasser!” he shouted, “I’ll teach you how 
to come into my grounds breaking and destroying and 
slashing and whistling! WHISTLING!” He bran¬ 
dished his walking stick as if he werd about to give 
Jock the clout on the head that Robin had predicted, 
but he only pointed to the gate with it calling louder 
than ever: 




“I’ll teach you how to come into my grounds!” 





JOCK BAREFOOT 19 

“Away with you! Away with you for an idle im¬ 
pudent callant that will come to no good end. Begone 
and never let me see your face again or I’ll—I’ll— 

I’ll—” 

What he would do he had no chance to tell for, 
casting the letter and branch on the ground, Jock 
Barefoot went bounding away. If a pack of wolves had 
been at his heels he could not have traveled faster. And 
no sooner was he off than the Laird, whose temper was 
always as quick to go as it was to come, began to be 
sorry for his hasty words. 

The letter was proof enough that the lad had been 
sent to the house on an errand, and, now that it lay on 
the ground before him, the broken branch which had 
been the cause of all his anger seemed to the Laird a 
trifling thing. He went to the gate and looked down 
the road, but, though he could see almost to the village 
street, no small boy was there. It passed all belief how 
he could have vanished so quickly, and, with the hope 
that he was lingering about to get his fee from the 
steward, the Laird called once or twice, “Laddie, come 
back, I’ve a shilling for you.” 

He soon saw that this was wasting breath and he 
was so put out by the whole matter that, though he 
went in when dinner was ready, he would not touch a 
bite. 


20 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“He is fairly spoiled with foreign cooking and 
there’ll be no pleasing him. I have it in mind to seek 
another place,” the cook told the steward. 

“Wait a little. Wait a little,” he advised. “There’s 
something lies heavy on his mind and I’ll hear it soon 
or my name is not Andrew Mac Andrew MacPherson 
as my father’s was before me.” He was right, too, for 
dinner was not long over when the Laird sent for him 
to inquire if he knew anything of a small lad with a 
red head and freckles on his nose like the specks on a 
throstle’s egg. 

“Had he shoon?” said Andrew MacAndrew, 
which was his way of asking if the child wore shoes. 

“No, he was barefoot,” answered the Laird, who 
looked downcast and ashamed, though the steward 
pretended not to notice this. 

“It could not have been Davy that’s Mistress 
Davit’s bairn,” he answered briskly, “for he will not 
gang barefoot for fear of stumping his toe, nor Mrs. 
Ferguson’s Jamie, for his hair is yellow as ripe barley, 
nor Mrs. Mucklewraith’s Robin—” 

“HAVE DONE! HAVE DONE!” cried the 
Laird. “Do I want to hear the names of the whole 
village and their mothers. Who is the child and where 
does he live?” 

“Well,” said Andrew MacAndrew, who was too 


JOCK BAREFOOT 21 

used to the Laird’s humors to be disturbed by them, 
“I’m thinking that it’s Jock Barefoot that you mean.” 
But his answer only provoked the Laird to a frenzy. 

“Who would give a name like that to any bairn?” 
he demanded. “Jock Barefoot! Jock Barefoot.” 

“Folks call him that,” said the steward, “and I’ve 
heard it told that he got the name because he cannot 
abide the feel of leather on his feet, and he a poor or¬ 
phan laddie that has neither kith nor kin to make him 
wear what he doesna’ like. And where would your 
Lairdship be seeing Jock Barefoot?” he added for he 
was not above showing a little curiosity. His Laird¬ 
ship was in no mood to gratify him. 

“Have you no ears to hear or civility to answer a 
plain question?” he asked bitterly. “Where does the 
laddie live?” 

“It’s no easy question to answer,” retorted Andrew 
Mac Andrew. “He sleeps mostly at Granny Blair’s 
for she’s old and needing company. He eats at the 
miller’s where there are already so many children that 
one more to sup porridge makes no difference. All 
the mothers that your Lairdship does not like to hear 
about do his mending and the like. He gets his Sat¬ 
urday tub along with Robin Mucklewraith, and the 
minister sees to it that he knows his catechism and 
Bible.” 


22 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“HOLD YOUR TONGUE!” shouted the Laird 
forgetful that he had been the one to urge the speaking. 
“HOLD YOUR TONGUE and have the horses put 
to the carriage. I’m going to the minister.” 

Only a little later the minister and the minister’s 
wife and the minister’s little daughter Kirsty were 
astonished to see the Laird’s fine carriage, drawn by 
two high-stepping bay horses, stopping in front of the 
manse. The Laird himself was getting out to visit 
them! They were still more astonished to learn that 
he had come to inquire for Jock Barefoot, though he 
could not have gone to a better place. J ock was in and 
out of the Manse like one of the family for he was 
Kirsty’s great playmate. 

“Run and find him, lassie,” her mother bade, “He’ll 
not be far away I’m thinking.” 

The Laird sat in the minister’s study to wait, but 
none too patiently. He did not explain why he wished 
to see Jock and when the minister told, as the steward 
had, that the boy was at home in every house in the 
village, and mothered by every woman there, he 
growled like an angry bear: 

“Foolishness. They will spoil him among them. 
What he needs is a good home and to stay there.” 

The minister and his wife agreed that he might be 
right, though Jock’s case was different from most. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 23 

When his father and mother died, which was before 
the minister’s family had come to Wraye, there had 
been no one to take the bairn but distant cousins who 
were not eager, and the village women were poor but 
tenderhearted. First one and then another had offered 
to do her part in caring for the child, and all together 
they had worked so well that now nobody ever thought 
of sending him away. 

“Jock is as happy as any laddie,” said the minister, 
“and good. There is no child more bidable except in 
the matter of wearing shoes, and that he will outgrow. 
I have advised against troubling him about it.” 

His eyes twinkled as he spoke, and so, for a won¬ 
der, did the Laird’s. The minister’s wife always 
thought he would have laughed outright if Kirsty 
had not come running in just then with plenty to 
tell, though not what the Laird wanted to hear. Jock 
Barefoot was not at the sweetshop, nor the mill, nor 
off with Robin and the other boys nor at Crippled 
Dick’s house. 

“He’s nowhere that he likes to be,” she reported 
breathlessly, “and Dick thinks he’s maybe gone to be a 
sailor.” 

The Laird told the whole story to the minister then, 
and it was not long before the Town-Crier went 
through the streets ringing his bell and calling: 


2 4 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Has anybody seen Jock Barefoot? Has anybody 
seen Jock Barefoot?” And varying his cry once in a 
while by adding: 

“If anybody’s seen Jock Barefoot, the minister 
wants to know.” 


CHAPTER II 


Soon a string of people were at the minister’s door, 
though most of them came to get news rather than to 
tell anything of the missing boy. A few had seen him 
at the mudpuddle that morning, a playmate or two had 
spoken to him on his way from the village, and a wag¬ 
goner had passed him on the road. 

“He was all right then and singing like a laverock,” 
the waggoner assured the minister, but that had been 
early in the day. No one had seen or heard of Jock 
Barefoot after he left the Laird’s house. 

Mistress Margot who had been among the first to 
reach the Manse was full of remorse for having sent 
him on the errand. 

“My heart has been in my mouth ever since I saw 
him go,” she said tearfully, “though the worst I feared 
was that he would lose the letter.” She took great com¬ 
fort in the thought that she had made him wash his feet 
before he went. 

“They were as white as the driven snow, poor lad¬ 
die,” she repeated over and over. 


25 












































JOCK BAREFOOT 27 

Robin Mucklewraith and Jamie Ferguson and 
Davy Davit came running to tell that a pair of Davy’s 
outgrown shoes, that his mother had given Jock Bare¬ 
foot only the day before, were hanging in a tree near 
the puddle. 

“I tellit her he would not wear them,” said Davy 
who was half-crying with excitement. 

All the children in the village went to look at the 
shoes, and Robin would have climbed the tree and 
brought them down but Kirsty would not hear of this. 

“He’ll get them himself when he comes home for 
supper,” she insisted, for she would not give up hope 
that Jock would soon be back to laugh with all of 
them at the great stir he had caused. 

Many friends and neighbors thought the same, and 
the miller’s wife set Jock’s usual place at the table, and 
filled a mug with milk for him. 

“Run to the door, hinny, and have a look for him,” 
she bade her youngest child when everything was ready 
for supper. But though more than one was watching 
for him no Jock Barefoot came singing down the 
street. Even the men grew uneasy now, and by bed¬ 
time everyone was roused. 

“He has run away and fallen into a peat-hag and 
it’s all my fault,” sobbed Mistress Margot when the 


28 JOCK BAREFOOT 

women gathered at her shop to talk over their fears. 

The minister was consulted and search parties 
went out with lanterns to be lighted when the long 
twilight ended. Jock Barefoot might be asleep on the 
moor or hillside. He might have gone so far that he 
had to stop at a farmhouse or shepherd’s hut for the 
night. He might have lost his way in a bog or ravine. 
These were some of the suggestions. 

“He’s too canny to have gotten into the loch,” said 
the miller in answer to an unspoken fear, but, when 
daylight came and the boy was not found, the Laird 
sent his men with ropes and nets to drag the water. 

At last every place in the neighborhood, dingles 
and copses, the glen of the Fairies, and the far pas¬ 
tures had been searched without a trace of Jock Bare¬ 
foot. And where to look next was a question! The 
Laird offered one pound, two pounds, five pounds for 
news, and ten pounds if the child were found. But, 
though this was more money than most of the villagers 
saw in a year, they could do no better for a reward 
than they had done without a thought of any pay. 

Still the reward made talk not only in Wraye but 
outside as well, and soon all sorts of rumors were 
brought in. One of these was that Jock Barefoot had 
been seen with a cattle drover footing it away over the 
border into England. This so caught the children’s 


JOCK BAREFOOT 29 

fancy that they made a song about it with the very 
same chorus that their lost playmate had liked: 

Jock Barefoot’s over the Border-0 
Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy. 

Ho, good Jock, would you serve us so, 

Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie. 
Rowdy, dowdy-O. 

Then came a tale that Jock Barefoot in kilt and 
tartan and bonnet was marching away to the hills 
with wild Highlanders, and the song must have an¬ 
other verse: 

Cockle-button and cockle-ben, 

Rowdy, dowdy, dowdy. 

Jock Barefoot’s off with Hieland men 
Singing rantie, cantie, rollicking rantie, 
Rowdy, dowdy-O. 

This verse was scarcely learned when Robin 
Mucklewraith came running and whooping to tell 
great news. “Jock Barefoot’s with GYPSIES! And 
he’s got a red kerchief on his head. The packman 
tellit the Laird and he’s sent to catch them all and 
bring them back.” 

There was no time for singing then. The children 
were too busy watching the highway and shouting, 


3 o JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Here they are! There they are!” if there was so 
much as a cloud of dust on the road. The excitement 
lasted for more than a day, but nothing came of it. 
The Laird followed every clue only to be disappointed 
again and again. The whole country seemed to be full 
of drovers, and Highlanders, and gypsies, and every 
one of them as hard to find as a flaxseed in a bushel of 
barley. 

After a little nobody beside the Laird and a few 
others had hopes of ever seeing Jock Barefoot again. 
Because of other strange things that were happening 
in the village just then, the child was almost forgotten, 
or at least for a time. 

The first to know of anything out of the way was 
the boy known as Crippled Dick. Crippled Dick was 
a great one for play. He could not go running and 
shouting about the streets with the other children, but 
nobody’s thoughts traveled faster than his. He was 
never at a loss for something to do. 

To hear him talk, his crutch was sometimes a horse, 
a grand black or grey or bay horse with crimson trap¬ 
pings, ready to gallop at a word up hill and down dale 
all over the world with Dick on its back. And an¬ 
other time, maybe on a day when Robin and all the 
other boys had gone fishing, that same crutch with a 
string attached would change into a fishing rod. No- 


JOCK BAREFOOT 31 

body, not even Robin, ever caught such fish as Dick 
brought up from a pool of sunlight on the kitchen 
floor. 

“Give him a brick and he’ll build a house,” his 
mother said. And she did not know half the splendid 
things he imagined. Nobody, unless it were Kirsty or 
Jock Barefoot, knew all of his games. They were his 
best playfellows. 

Dick had grieved his heart sick over Jock’s disap¬ 
pearance and he was thinking of him the very night 
that he heard a noise—a queer little scratching sound 
—at the wooden shutter of a window close by his 
bed. 

The shutter was strong and securely fastened, but 
in one of its panels was a hole as large as a penny. This 
hole had always been a source of great pleasure to 
Dick. If he played that he was shut into a prison by 
a wicked king, the hole-in-the-shutter was a fine outlet 
through which to let down a string to draw up a mes¬ 
sage from his friends which read perhaps, “WE 
WILL RESKUE YOU TO-NITE.” Or if the play 
was that he was besieged in his castle, he could lie 
with an eye at a loophole to watch the enemy’s every 
movement. 

All of this had been make-believe, but the noise was 
real—scratch, scratch, scratch. Dick was not afraid. 


32 JOCK BAREFOOT 

All of his life he had been expecting something to 
happen, and now it was coming true. 

As a usual thing he had an older brother for a 
bedfellow, but to-night he was away. Because of this 
a little lantern had been left burning in the room to 
keep Dick company. By its light he could see the 
knot hole plainly. At first he lay still, watching it with 
his heart beating fast, but after a moment or two of 
suspense he called softly, “Who is there? What is your 
wish?” 

Just as if someone had been waiting to find out if 
he were awake, the scratching stopped. A small object 
that appeared to be nothing but an ordinary stick came 
through the hole and fell on the bed. A token, thought 
Dick, who was prepared for anything. Still he must 
be careful. He lifted the stick as gingerly as if it were 
a poisoned arrow and gave a gasp of delight. What 
he held was a tiny flute or flageolet such as shepherds 
make from hollow reeds. Dick had often and often 
longed for one. 

“Thank you, thank you,” he whispered through 
the hole in the shutter, but if he expected an answer 
he was disappointed. Listen as he would, not another 
sound was to be heard. 

Dick sat up in bed and turned the flute over and 
over, as if by looking at it he could discover the giver. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 33 

It had been carefully made with a mouthpiece and 
four finger holes. He put it to his mouth and blew 
softly, one, two, three, four fine little, weird little notes. 
The very sound of them made him tingle all over. 



A small object came through the hole. 


Just like fairy music, he thought. Yes, and who, 
but the Little Good People, went about in the night 
playing tricks like this? They were the ones who had 
brought the flute he hadn’t a doubt. Oh, oh, if he could 
just have seen them scratching on the shutter, and 































34 JOCK BAREFOOT 

peeking through the hole, though perhaps it was bet¬ 
ter as it was. Once a man had tried to see fairies and 
all he got out of it was a tweak on his nose. His nose 
was crooked ever after. 

Dick could not wait until morning to tell his 
mother what had happened. 

“Wake up, wake up,” he called, “and see what the 
fairies have given me.” 


CHAPTER III 


“There are no such folks as fairies, or brownies, 
or the like. The minister himself says so and there’s 
no going against the minister with all his learning.” 
This was what Crippled Dick’s mother told him more 
than once on the day after his strange experience, but 
when she tried to guess who the mysterious visitor, or 
visitors, might have been, she was soon at her wit’s end. 

“Laddies,” said she, “or maybe Larry Lickladle, 
the fiddler. He is out later than most and likes his fun. 
Or—” but here she came to an end of her guessing, and 
had to begin again. “You’ll find it was that long-leg¬ 
ged Robin Mucklewraith or some of his gang.” 

What was found out by cautious questions among 
the neighbors left her as puzzled as ever. Larry Lick- 
ladle had been at a fiddler’s contest miles away. Robin 
had spent the night at his grandmother’s in Next Town. 
Jamie Ferguson, who had a cold, had been well dosed 
and put to bed before supper, and that Davy Davit 
would go anywhere by himself in the middle of the 
night was too much to believe. 


35 


36 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“There’s nobody to have done it but the Little 
Good People,” said Dick who wished to think that 
very thing and nothing else. “I tellit you that before 
you went asking about.” 

“Well, keep it to yourself,” said his mother, “or 
folks will think ye’re daftie.” 

In spite of her warning, though, it was soon all over 
the village that the Little Good People had brought 
Dick a flute that might be a magic one. Every child 
in Wraye went to bed at night hoping for a visit from 
fairy folk. One enterprising laddie even took the pains 
to bore a hole in a shutter to be ready for them, but all 
he got was a scolding from his mother. 

Not a child, but an old, old woman was the next to 
have a surprise. She was not expecting anything, and 
she could not believe her own eyes when she went out 
one morning and found, close to the doorstep, a heap 
of sticks for her fire. And, hanging to the doorlatch, 
was a fine fresh fish for her breakfast. 

“I have not had such a fish since Jock Barefoot 
went away. He was always a great one for fish¬ 
ing, poor laddie,” she said, for she was the very 
Granny Blair at whose house the orphan boy had often 
stayed. 

She had no other thought than that some good 
neighbor had brought the fish and the fuel, but when 


JOCK BAREFOOT 37 

she hobbled from cottage to cottage to find out whom 
she must thank, nobody knew anything about them. 

“Fairies,” whispered the children who soon learned 
what had happened, and, when Davy Davit com- 



Not a child, but an old, old woman was the next. 


plained of being wakened by birds chissicking and 
peeping and cawing and craiking in the night, not 
only children but older people as well were full of 
talk. Davy’s mother, it is true, thought that he might 
have had a nightmare. 


























3« 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“He is always restless-like,” she said, but this did 
not keep others from thinking and saying, too, that 
what Davy had heard was the chatter of—well, if not 
the Little Good People themselves something just as 
uncanny. 

There was one person who should have been able 
to find out the truth, and that man was the watchman 
of Wraye. He went up and down the streets at night 
telling the time and the weather, and keeping an eye 
on things so that everyone else could sleep safe and 
easy. 

“Laddies or fairies they’ll not get away from me,” 
he said, when he heard of the strange happenings. And 
that very night he started out to end the mystery or 
know the reason why. At ten o’clock a stray cat crossed 
his path, at eleven a dog barked, at twelve the sexton’s 
rooster crowed, and at one the watchman sat down on 
the church steps to rest. The next thing he knew some¬ 
one was shouting in his ears: 

Two o’clock! Two o’clock! Off and away, 

If the fox comes to town the geese will all gae. 

“Where? What? Who?” cried the watchman 
springing up in a hurry but he got no answer. Not 
a soul was there and nobody was to be found, though 
the poor man fairly ran about the village, dashing 


JOCK BAREFOOT 39 

around corners and crying into dark places, “Come 
out! Come out! or I’ll come and fetch you.” 

He was so distracted that instead of calling the 
next hour in the proper way, “Three o’clock and all’s 
quiet,” he quavered the foolish rhyme that he had just 
heard and did not even get that right: 

Three o’clock! Three o’clock! Off and away. 

If the Goose comes to town the foxes will gae. 

As soon as it was light, he was at the minister’s 
with his story. Nobody need think that the Little Good 
People were at the bottom of the mischief. No, indeed! 

“It was a laddie’s voice that I heard and there’s no 
use for him to deny it,” he declared. 

“We shall see,” said the minister, but though he 
inquired himself at every home, there was not a boy 
in the whole village who had so much as put his nose 
out of doors after bedtime. And the mothers were 
indignant. 

“The poor bairns get the blame of everything, fairy 
tricks and all,” complained Mrs. Mucklewraith, “and 
it puts things to do in their heads.” 

In spite of the watchman’s protests most people 
believed he had fallen asleep and dreamed it all. But 
other things happened. 

Jamie Ferguson who slept by an open window, be- 


4 o JOCK BAREFOOT 

cause his father had all sorts of notions about fresh 
air, waked up one day to find his nose black with 
soot and a great smutty mustache on his lip. He was 
such a sight that his own mother could not keep from 
laughing at him. And when he got Robin Muckle- 
wraith to sleep with him next night, the same trick 
was played. Only this time it was two black noses 
and two sooty mustaches that Mrs. Ferguson saw when 
she wakened the children for breakfast. 

Then Mistress Margot’s cow was milked in the 
night, and all the talk turned to that. Not that the post¬ 
mistress was angry. 

“Let them have the milk if it will do them any 
good, the poor wee ones,” she said, for like every one 
else she thought it was the work of the fairies. And 
she was all the more convinced of this when her milk 
bucket was filled with sweet ripe berries from the 
moorland. Yes, the Little Good People always paid 
in one way or another for what they took. 

Belief in fairies was growing fast when one morn¬ 
ing Kirsty, the minister’s little daughter, walked into 
the kitchen where her mother was busy and said as 
calmly as if what she told was nothing surprising. 

“See the Lucky Stone that Jock Barefoot put in my 
playhouse.” 

Kirsty was as full of fun and frolic as any child 



“See the Lucky Stone that Jock Barefoot put in 

my playhouse.” 





































42 JOCK BAREFOOT 

should be, but she had a head on her shoulders. “You 
can’t fool Kirsty,” her playmates agreed. And they 
had learned, too, that they might as well try to move the 
Mucklestane from the moor as to try to get Kirsty 
to say what she did not believe, or do what she did not 
think was right. Her mother was so startled to hear 
her speak of the lost boy in this casual way that she 
dropped a pan, but she did not doubt her. 

“Jock Barefoot!” she cried, “Where has the laddie 
been this long while, and why have you not brought 
him in for a bite and a sup?” She was right much 
vexed when Kirsty said that she had not seen Jock. 

“But he has been here,” she insisted, “for he is the 
one who promised me the Lucky Stone, and nobody 
else knows where my playhouse is.” 

“It is all in a piece with the mischief that is driving 
your father wild. What with the Little Good People 
here, and the Little Good People there, he has not rest 
at all. And now you are talking about Lucky Stones 
and Jock Barefoot. I’m surprised at you, Kirsty, and 
you a minister’s child,” said her mother. But the min¬ 
ister had more patience. 

He knew that a Lucky Stone was one with a ring 
around it. There was no luck in it, and he would not 
like Kirsty to think that, but it was a pretty plaything. 
As for Jock Barefoot, she must not set her heart too 


JOCK BAREFOOT 43 

greatly on his return, though it was right to have hope, 
as the Bible taught. 

“And you do think maybe I’m right, don’t you?” 
cried Kirsty. “I can see it in your eyes.” 

Neither her mother’s doubt nor her father’s reason¬ 
ing could make her change her mind. Jock Barefoot, 
and nobody else, had brought her the Lucky Stone, 
and that night at supper she would not eat her ban¬ 
nock. 

“I’m going to put it in the playhouse for Jock,” she 
explained. 

“It’s a kind thought,” said the minister. So when 
the meal ended, the little girl was allowed to take her 
bannock and another cake besides to lay on a bit of 
white cloth in the midst of the playhouse hidden among 
the broom bushes. 

She was up and out early next morning to see what 
had happened and the household was roused to hear, 
“They are gone! They are gone! Mother, Father, 
Jock Barefoot has taken his bannocks.” 

“A dog has likely eaten them,” said her mother, 
but the minister looked thoughtful. Kirsty knew very 
well that he was puzzled, and every now and then she 
was back with something more to tell him. 

“I’m thinking it was Jock who brought Dick the 
flute. It’s just popped into my head,” she cried. Then 


44 JOCK BAREFOOT 

here she was bubbling with laughter at the thought 
that it must have been Jock who blackened noses and 
put mustaches on his playfellows. 

“Oh, Father,” she said, “what grand fun it will be 
when they find out who has been making sport of 
them, though Robin will not like it.” 

And at last she came a little more seriously to ask, 
“You’ll be telling the Laird, will you not, Father?” 
But now it was the minister’s turn to astonish her. 

“I’m not the one for that,” he answered, as 
promptly as if he had already thought of her question. 
“You must go and tell him, yourself, Kirsty.” 


CHAPTER IV 

The minister’s wife was very unwilling to have 
Kirsty go on such an errand, especially when she 
learned that the minister was not going with her. 

“The Laird’s cross to children, and I’m not of a 
mind to have our Kirsty’s feelings hurt,” she told him. 
“If there’s any use in carrying idle tales like this you’re 
the one to go.” 

The minister had to reason it all out, just as he did 
in his sermons, before he could persuade her to give 
her consent. First, the tale of the lucky-stone and the 
bannocks was one for a child to tell. If the minister 
went with it, the Laird’s hopes might be raised higher 
than was wise without more proof. Second, it would 
be a long time, if ever, before the Laird would be cross 
with any child, if the minister judged rightly. He was 
too downcast because of Jock Barefoot for that. Third, 
a visit from a sensible little lass like Kirsty was just 
what the Laird needed most. 

“His great house is lonely, which is one reason 


45 


46 JOCK BAREFOOT 

why he does not stay there more, and we must not be¬ 
grudge him a little comfort,” said the minister. 

The end of it all was that Kirsty, in her very best 
pinafore and new shoes, to say nothing of a cherry 
colored ribbon on her hair, was soon ready for her 
visit. 

“There’s no lassie like our Kirsty. She’s real 
bonny,” said her mother as she watched the little girl 
down the street, and the minister was more than will¬ 
ing to agree with her. 

What with all her excitement over Jock Barefoot, 
and the visit to the Laird besides, Kirsty could not 
walk. She must go skipping and hopping and danc¬ 
ing along the way until everybody she passed turned 
to look at her. And it was all she could do to keep her 
news to herself. Just suppose she should stop and call 
“Jock Barefoot’s home, and I’m going to tell the 
Laird!” Why the Town Crier would be out with his 
bell in five minutes after, and people would be tum¬ 
bling over each other to get to the minister’s! 

She had no idea of letting the secret get away from 
her, but she was pleased when a playmate asked where 
she was going in her Sabbath clothes. At least she 
could tell that much. 

“Oh, just to the Laird’s house,” she answered, as 





























48 JOCK BAREFOOT 

carelessly as if that were nothing more than going to 
the sweetshop or the baker’s. 

“Wh-e-e,” whistled Robin Mucklewraith who hap¬ 
pened to overhear her. “I’m glad I’m not in your 
shoes. The Laird has a chopper to chop off your head, 
and he’ll give you no candle to light you to bed.” 

“If my head were off I wouldn’t need a candle,” 
answered Kirsty promptly. Robin Mucklewraith 
need not think to frighten her with his silly rhymes. 
And what wouldn’t he give to know what she knew! 
She had scarcely left him behind when here came 
Jamie Ferguson. 

“Hey, Kirsty, where are you going in all your fine 
togs?” he called. 

She had a great mind not to tell him, but she knew 
he would hear from Robin anyway. 

“I am going to see the Laird, Jamie Ferguson,” 
she replied with dignity. “My father, the minister, 
is sending me.” 

“Whe-e-e,” whistled Jamie in his turn. “He’ll cut 
off your hair, and he’ll snip off your nose, and make a 
big pie with a’ ten of your toes.” He did not wait for 
an answer for Robin was still in sight, and there was 
nothing that Jamie liked better than to tag after Robin. 

“Goodbye, Kirsty, if I never see you again,” he 
called as he raced away. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 49 

Boys were silly creatures, thought Kirsty, and she 
was glad that the next person coming toward her was 
Effie, the sexton’s daughter. Effie was a big girl with 
a merry face, though it grew serious enough when she 
heard where Kirsty was going. 

“Have a care, Kirsty,” she cried. “The old Laird 
is an awful one to visit. It is told he threw a plate 
at Andrew McAndrew and on a Sabbath, too. And 
there’s some that say he has Jock Barefoot in a dun¬ 
geon under the Castle.” 

“I’ve heard that but hearing need not be believ¬ 
ing, my father says,” replied Kirsty moving on, though 
when she had gone only a little farther she called back, 
“I’ll tell you all about the Laird’s house when I’ve been 
there, Effie.” 

“Are you going to the Castle?” asked a woman 
who was passing. “I wonder that the minister would 
let you.” Kirsty wished her good-morning as po¬ 
litely as she could, and left her exclaiming, “Eh, 
sirs,” and “What do ye think?” as if something ter¬ 
rible was happening. 

The little girl was out of the village now, and there 
were no more questions to answer. She was begin¬ 
ning to feel a little strange and lonely when a great 
sheep dog came bounding to meet her. He was one 
of the Laird’s dogs and an old acquaintance, for he 


50 JOCK BAREFOOT 

often accompanied the steward to the village. He 
wagged his tail in greeting and looked into her face 
as if he were trying to tell her something. Before 



Kirsty had thrown her arms around him. 


she knew what she was doing Kirsty had thrown her 
arms around him and was crying out, “Oh, Shep, I 
am going to see the Laird and I will not be afraid, 
I will not, I will not.” 

Whether he understood or not, the dog turned 





JOCK BAREFOOT 51 

and went with her, keeping close to her side all the 
way to the Castle as if to assure her of his protection. 

Kirsty was surprised to find other visitors ahead 
of her. In an open space before the gateway were 
horses, covered vans and rickety carts. Bags and 
bundles of all shapes and sizes lay scattered on the 
ground, and half a dozen mongrel dogs that guarded 
them sprang up in a hurry to growl at Shep. Excited 
voices reached the little girl’s ears, and when she 
looked in she saw that the courtyard was crowded with 
men, women and children. 

They were a very different kind from the sober 
village folk. The women wore velvet bodices and 
gay skirts of yellow or red. Strings of beads were 
around their necks, and copper rings hung from their 
ears. Even the men had sashes about their waists and 
pieces of bright-colored cloth on their heads. 

Kirsty did not have to be told that they were gyp¬ 
sies. Every summer one or another of their wander¬ 
ing bands came to a dell near Wraye known as the 
Gypsies’ Dingle. Permission to camp there had been 
given a gypsy king by a laird of the land more than 
a hundred years before, or so it was told. There was 
a rhyme about it that the village children delighted 
in chanting: 


52 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

As long as broom and heather grow, 

Or Mucklestane stands on the moor, 

Gypsy folk have leave to stay 
On the land of Lyndesaye. 

Twelve days and twelve nights 
These shall be the gypsies’ rights; 

One hare from the hill, 

One fish from the rill, 

One sheaf from the field. 

Air, water, wood and bield. 

All given scot-free, 

For in my need they helpit me. 

What the need or help had been was long ago for¬ 
gotten, but the rhyme had traveled down from Laird 
to Laird, and gypsy band to gypsy band. Each year 
between broom-time and heather-time gypsies came 
to the dingle. 

The men were always skillful in shoeing horses 
and mending pots and pans, and the women sold 
laces and told fortunes. Their coming made as much 
stir among the children as a Punch and Judy show 
or a dancing bear, and though the minister often 
warned his people not to believe in their amulets nor 
the foolish fortune-telling, he and everybody else liked 
the light-hearted wanderers. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 53 

There was no gay bantering talk among them this 
morning, nor laughter nor singing. They stood sul¬ 
len as prisoners before the Laird who was in one of 
his tempers. As Kirsty came up she heard his voice 
above all the rest, and now an old woman, who held 
her head high as if she were a great person, stood out 
from the crowd to answer him. 

“The child you seek is not in the tents of the Rom¬ 
anies, north, south, east or west. The print of his bare 
foot is on your own heart, Laird of Lindesaye, and 
you need not think to wipe it out by breaking the 
promises and pledges kept so long and driving us from 
the bonny dingle.” 

Kirsty understood everything then. Ever since the 
rumors that Jock Barefoot was with some of them the 
Laird had been on the watch for gypsies. He had 
scarcely been able to wait for the time which usually 
brought them into the neighborhood and now that 
they had come, with nothing to tell, he was angry as 
well as disappointed. Andrew MacAndrew MacPher- 
son who stood close by him could not calm him. He 
must have his say like a spoiled child. 

“Pledges and promises,” he sputtered. “Fiddle¬ 
sticks and broomstraw! Give them a hare and they’ll 
take ten, a fish and they’ll empty the burn. North, 
south, east, west! BOSH! If they do not know where 



Pledges and promiseshe sputtered . 
































JOCK BAREFOOT 55 

the child is I’ll eat my wig. I’m no silly, gaping stew¬ 
ard to be deceived by them. Let them tell the truth 
or out they go. Fetch the Baillie, Andrew Mac Andrew 
MacPherson, fetch the Baillie.” 

“Wait, wait,” cried Kirsty whose heart was ach¬ 
ing for the poor wanderers, “You must not send them 
away. I’ve come with news of Jock Barefoot.” 

The stir in the courtyard stopped on the instant, 
and every eye turned to the little girl who had been 
unnoticed until then. She grew a little uncomfortable 
under such concentrated attention. 

“I’m just Kirsty from the manse,” she explained, 
making the Laird a curtsy as her mother had begged 
her to remember to do. “I’ve brought good news of 
Jock, and you will let the gypsies have their bonny 
dingle, will you not? My father, the minister, says 
it’s wicked to break promises.” 

The Laird spoke quickly then in the gypsies’ own 
patter. Kirsty could not understand the words but his 
meaning was plain. The dark faces before her cleared 
as if by magic, and a good wish was at the end of every 
tongue. A blessing for the little lady, a long life for 
the Laird, a rich harvest from his fields, a good season 
for his sheep. One merry fellow had a kind word for 
the steward. 

“Come to the bonny dingle, Andrew MacAndrew 


56 JOCK BAREFOOT 

MacPherson,” he called, “and the old wives will find 
you a grand fortune in the tea leaves.” 

All the anger and resentment were gone in a 
breath, and soon the gypsies were gone, too, bags, 
bundles, babies, dogs and all, to set up their tents 
and build their fires in the spot they loved so well. 

Only the Laird, and the steward, and the little 
girl, with the dog still beside her, were left in the 
courtyard. If it had not been for Shep, Kirsty would 
have been very much inclined to run away like Jock 
Barefoot. What would the Laird have to say to a child 
who had meddled with his business and almost called 
him wicked? She looked up with a timid glance to 
find him smiling broadly at her and speaking, too, 
though not to her. “Come in Shep,” he called, “and 
bring the lassie with you.” 


CHAPTER V 


Except for Robin Mucklewraith, who had 
climbed up and peeped in a window, none of the chil¬ 
dren had ever seen the inside of the Laird’s house. 
All that Robin could tell was that everything looked 
grand, and that the pictures on the wall had frames of 
gold. But Crippled Dick’s imagination soon sup¬ 
plied what was lacking. His favorite amusement was 
to tell what he thought the Laird’s house was like, with 
gold chairs, gold dishes, gold hangings! And now 
Kirsty would see it all. She drew a deep breath as she 
followed the Laird into the hall, and another longer 
one as she sat in a satin-covered chair in the great draw¬ 
ingroom. It was terribly hard to sit in a satiny chair 
without slipping, especially when her toes did not 
reach the floor. But Kirsty managed it till the Laird 
told Andrew MacAndrew to bring her a hassock. 
Then she could look about with ease. 

Well, except for the picture frames there was no 
gold in the room, but it was grand with its brocaded 
sofas and soft carpets. Kirsty could scarcely believe 


57 



Then she could look about with ease . 



























JOCK BAREFOOT 59 

that it was truly herself sitting there to tell the Laird 
all she thought and believed about Jock Barefoot. And 
the Laird believed it too. 

“It’s the laddie himself and no other,” he declared, 
giving a nearby table such a resounding thump with 
his fist that Kirsty might have been frightened if she 
had not already made friends with him. When she 
and Shep went up the castle steps, the Laird had taken 
one of her small hands in one of his big ones, and that 
very instant she had lost all of her fear of him, though 
it did seem strange to hear him laughing and chuck¬ 
ling over Jock’s pranks. 

“So he comes at night like Robin Goodfellow that 
the tales tell about and blackens faces and milks cows,” 
he said delightedly. 

“And brings fish for Granny Blair’s breakfast,” 
put in Kirsty. “Jock Barefoot’s always a great one 
for helping.” 

“I would not have thought he would be so full of 
tricks,” said the Laird. “He seemed a wee frightened 
laddie to me, with no mind to stand up for himself.” 

“Oh, but that was because he was not used to be¬ 
ing scolded-like, and you the Laird, too,” cried Kirsty, 
who was always one to stand up for her friends. 
“Jock’s brave, as brave as Robin Mucklewraith. 
Robin cannot come it over Jock.” 


6o 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

The Laird seemed pleased to hear this. 

“He’s a good laddie and we must bring him home, 
Kirsty. We must bring him home,” he told her more 
than once. 

• He had a plan, too. Some one must watch in the 
playhouse till the laddie came again. 

“He’ll be back, never fear, and we’ll have him be¬ 
fore he knows it,” said the Laird chuckling at the 
thought. “I’ll watch there myself.” 

“But he does not know you are sorry yet,” she ob¬ 
jected. “He’ll run like a tod at the sight of you, I’m 
thinking, and there’s nobody can run faster than 
Jock.” 

The steward who was waiting with the dog in the 
hall shook his head at her daring. The lassie had bet¬ 
ter have a care, or she’d upset the frying pan and all 
the fat would be in the fire. If he could catch her eye he 
would give her a warning, but this was no easy thing to 
do. Let the Laird see him keeking about and whisper¬ 
ing and he’d go off like gunpowder. Well, the lassie 
was not afraid and she had a way with her. The Laird 
was pleased as a stroked cat. 

“Who must do the watching then?” he asked as 
mildly as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And 
what was the lassie saying now? 

“There’s my father,” she told the Laird, “though 


JOCK BAREFOOT 61 

it might make talk if the minister hid in the bushes to 
spring out at poor Jock, and there’s myself if my 
mother would let me, which I doubt, and there’s 
Granny Blair but she’s too old. And there’s Andrew 
MacAndrew MacPherson, nobody’s frightened at 
him.” 

“But I will not sit in the dews all night,” cried 
Andrew MacAndrew bursting in at the door with 
Shep beside him. “It is bad for my bones, and there’s 
bugs flying about. I canna abide the bugs. I will not 
do it for any Laird.” 

The Laird’s face began to grow red and there was 
every sign of a storm in the air when Kirsty suggested, 
“If you’ll not do it for the Laird, you maybe will for 
Jock Barefoot.” 

Yes, for the laddie, the steward might be willing to 
watch for a while. 

“But suppose it is not Jock?” he objected, “There’s 
talk of bogies going about and I’ll not have a bogie 
creeping up behind me.” 

“Then I’ll go myself,” declared the Laird. “The 
laddie will never know the difference in the dark.” But 
this disturbed the steward more than bogies could have 
done. 

“You’ll catch rheumatism and hoasts,” he cried, 
“and ye are too old besides.” 


62 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Old?” said the Laird indignantly. “You are older 
yourself. Ye were at my christening.” 

“I was not,” said Andrew McAndrew. “You were 
at my own.” 

They glowered at each other very much as Robin 



Mucklewraith and Jamie Ferguson might have done, 
and Kirsty who was used to settling quarrels among 
the children thought it was a good time to speak. 

“Andrew MacAndrew might sit with his back 
against a tree and then he would not be afraid of bogies 


























JOCK BAREFOOT 63 

behind him,” she suggested. “There’s a bonny pear 
tree near the playhouse.” 

Whether the steward liked this idea or not he 
agreed to it, though for another reason than the one 
Kirsty had given. 

“There’s nobody would like to sit all night with 
no place to rest, but if there’s a tree to lean against I’ll 
try it,” he told her. “And I’ll take my pipe for com¬ 
pany.” 

“You will not,” shouted the Laird. “The laddie 
would scent the tobacco and be off like a hare.” 

“It’s my pipe or no Andrew MacAndrew. And 
you need not be glowering at me, for it will do you 
no good,” cried the steward. 

“You could take it in your pocket like Effie the 
sexton’s lass takes a shilling. She’s never to spend it 
but it’s there if she needs it,” said Kirsty. “And I’ve 
another thought. You should have a sweetie to coax 
the laddie with. Jock’s awful fond of sweets.” 

This so delighted the Laird that he was all for send¬ 
ing Andrew MacAndrew to the village at that mo¬ 
ment to lay in a supply of Mistress Margot’s wares. 

“Gingerbread, candy sugar, lollipops, everything 
she has,” he directed. 

“And cracknuts,” put in the steward. “There’s 


64 JOCK BAREFOOT 

nothing a laddie likes better than to try his teeth on 
cracknuts.” 

Soon to hear him talk it was Andrew MacAndrew 
MacPherson and nobody else who had made the whole 
plan. He would go to the manse at a certain hour 
with his sweets in one pocket and his pipe in another, 
though he would not light it unless the bugs grew too 
fierce. And when Jock Barefoot came to see what 
Kirsty had left him, or maybe to bring her a present, 
the steward would speak, whisper-like, “Whist, lad¬ 
die, it’s your old friend Andrew MacAndrew with a 
pocket full of goodies—” 

“Fiddlesticks!” cried the Laird. “Catch him first 
and then say, ‘The Laird has sent you a lollipop.’ ” 

It was as good as a play to hear them, but Kirsty 
knew very well that she must not stay to listen. 

“My mother will think harm has come to me,” she 
said getting up and smoothing her apron. “She always 
does when I’m away from her.” 

The Laird would not have her leave, though, with¬ 
out refreshment, and when the steward proposed to 
take the lassie to the kitchen for a bite he roared! 

“For what would she be doing in the kitchen and 
she my guest.” 

In the end Andrew MacAndrew himself waited 
on her just as if she were the finest lady in the land. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 65 

Kirsty wished with all her heart that those teasing 
boys could see her sipping milk from a silver cup, 
and eating scones in the Laird’s drawing room. Her 
pleasure reached its height when the steward filled 
her pinafore pockets with all the cakes that were left. 

“I’ll take them to Crippled Dick,” she said at once. 
“It will be the next thing to coming himself to the 
Laird’s house, and that’s a thing he’s always wanted 
to do. He believes everything here is made of gold 
but he’d like it better as it is, I’m thinking.” 

She had thanked the Laird and was already out 
of the door when the steward came running to call 
her back. 

“Wait, Kirsty, wait,” he cried. “Ye’ve forgot¬ 
ten it.” 

Kirsty looked hastily for her kerchief which was 
all she had brought with her, but that was tight in her 
hand. 

“No, no, it’s naught you had,” said the steward who 
was in a great state of excitement. “It’s the grand re¬ 
ward. Five pounds for news of the laddie. The Laird 
has it all ready—a five pound note. Think of it and 
you but a bit lassie.” 

“Oh, that,” said Kirsty, as the Laird himself came 
hurrying out. “I cannot take it. My father, the min- 


66 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

ister, would not let me, but you might give it to Andrew 
MacPherson for sitting among the bugs.” 

She did not stop to see whether or not this suited 
the Laird. She was in too great a hurry to get home 
with all her news of gypsies and cakes and plans. 
Never had there been such a delightful visit, and the 
most astonishing thing that she had to tell was that 
she liked the Laird. 

“He’s almost as good as you are, father,” she said, 
“and as for his temper, I do not mind that a bit.” 


CHAPTER VI 


Only one other beside the minister and his wife 
was let into the great secret plan for catching Jock 
Barefoot. Kirsty confided it to Crippled Dick, but 
that was just like putting it at the bottom of a well. No¬ 
body would hear it from Dick. And it was nice to 
have him to talk with, especially when Kirsty’s mother 
did not approve of the plan, and even the minister 
looked grave when it was mentioned. 

Crippled Dick entered into the adventure with as 
much enthusiasm as if he were going to be right on 
the spot. 

“Eh, Kirsty,” he said, “it will be grand sport, I’m 
thinking, with Andrew MacAndrew MacPherson be¬ 
hind the broom bushes, and you watching at a window, 
maybe, and Jock slipping through the night to have 
his fun and never dreaming that anyone has found him 
out. Andrew should speak quickly, though, or Jock 
will be off. It will not be easy to put a hand on him.” 
If only he could go to the garden, as well as the stew¬ 
ard, it would be a different matter. 

<7 


68 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“I’d blow soft-like on my flute and Jock would 
know who was there and not be frightened,” Dick told 
the little girl. 

“And oh, Kirsty, I’ve a thought,” he added. “I can¬ 
not go myself, but I’ll lend you the flute.” 

“I cannot play,” objected Kirsty, but Dick waved 
that aside. 

“No more can I, not tunes,” he said, “but I can 
make it call like a bird climbing the sky. I’ll show you. 
And if you put your fingers where I put mine, and 
blow your breath in the mouthhole as if you were blow¬ 
ing a feather in the air, you can sound it as well as my¬ 
self.” 

Kirsty’s fingers trembled a little at her undertak¬ 
ing, but she followed instructions so well that one note 
after another came quavering out, each a little higher 
and finer than the one that went before. 

“I tellit you could,” cried Dick triumphantly. “I 
could not have done it better.” 

“But my mother will not let me stay in the garden,” 
said Kirsty. “She says it’s all just wicked foolishness.” 
For Kirsty to stay out in the night, however, was not 
Dick’s idea. All she had to do was to lean out of the 
window and sound the call once, or maybe twice 
would be better. 

“Then I’ll know before any of the other laddies 


JOCK BAREFOOT 69 

that Jock’s home,” he told her. Kirsty was willing to 
try, but she was doubtful. 

“It’s a bonny sound,” she said, hesitating a little 
as she spoke for fear of hurting Dick’s feelings, “but 
there’s no noise in it. You’ll never hear it.” 

“That I will,” cried Dick. “It’s thin but it’s reach¬ 
ing, and I’ll be listening. I’ll sleep with my ear against 
the hole in the shutter all night.” He cautioned Kirsty, 
though, not to let the other children see what she was 
taking home with her. 

“Else they’ll be fashing me to lend it to them which 
I will not,” he explained. 

The precious flute was carefully hidden under 
Kirsty’s pinafore where it made a conspicuous bulge. 
All the way she expected that someone would ask what 
she was hiding. Even when she reached the Manse she 
did not feel easy until Dick’s treasure was under the 
pillow on her own bed. And even then she climbed 
the stairs twice before supper time to see if it were safe. 

Dick’s suggestion that she might watch at a win¬ 
dow fell in with her own desires, and she decided at 
once that she would not go to bed that night till all was 
over. Not only did her mother object to this, but she 
insisted that Kirsty should eat her supper before she 
went out to watch for Andrew MacAndrew MacPher- 


son. 


70 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Laird or no laird, children must eat and sleep,” 
she said. 

Fortunately the steward came before bed time, 
though at first glimpse Kirsty was not sure that it was 
himself. He was wrapped up for all the world as if 
he were going to sit on an iceberg, instead of taking 
his ease in the pleasant garden where Kirsty played 
every day. 

Besides his own plaid he had one of the Laird’s 
tartans wrapped tight around him, and on his head 
he wore a great woolen night-cap that made his head 
look like a teapot with an enormous cosy, or at least 
this was what Kirsty thought. 

He was full of grumbling. First because he had 
not been allowed to bring Shep, who had more sense 
than most folk, to keep him company. The Laird had 
gone up in the air at the mere thought of such a 
thing. 

“He has to be humored,” groaned Andrew Mac- 
Andrew, “but it’s wearying.” Then, too, so many in¬ 
structions about Jock Barefoot had been given him 
that his head spun around like a top. 

“I must not speak loud and I must not speak soft. 
I must not spring on him sudden-like, and I must not 
let him go. I came early to get rid of it all,” he told 
the little girl. 



He was wrapped up as if he were going' 
to sit on an iceberg . 













72 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“And did you bring the sweeties?” inquired Kirsty, 
for to her this was the most important thing. 

“I did that,” said Andrew with pride, “a ginger¬ 
bread monkey, a sugar-horse painted red, and one of 
the queen’s soldiers made of chocolate. You’ll like 
him, Kirsty. And cracknuts, besides. Mistress Mar¬ 
got was fairly astonished at all I bought. ‘Are you 
turning child again, Andrew MacAndrew MacPher- 
son?’ she asked, but she learned nothing from me. ‘It’s 
the Laird’ was the only answer I gave her.” 

Kirsty thought it a great pity for sweets like these 
to be hidden away in Andrew’s pocket. 

“Let’s spread them in the playplace,” she pro¬ 
posed. “Then when Jock comes he’ll spy them the 
very first thing, and while he’s wondering who put 
them here, for he’ll know I would not have so many, 
you can slip out and tell him.” 

This plan was so much to the steward’s liking that 
before Kirsty’s mother called her in there was a grand 
array of sugar plums under the broom bushes, the 
chocolate soldier leading all the rest. 

Kirsty thought of them with a great deal of satis¬ 
faction as she lay in bed with Dick’s flute clasped 
tightly in her hand. She was determined not to go to 
sleep. At the least sound from the garden she would 
jump out of bed and fly down the stair with a coverlet 


JOCK BAREFOOT 73 

around her. If he succeeded in the plan, Andrew Mac- 
Andrew was to bring Jock Barefoot to the house to 
spend the night in the guest room, where the bed had 
been made with fresh sheets. The minister was wait¬ 
ing up to open the door, and before he could even turn 
the key Kirsty would be right by his side. 

Jock would be better pleased if she were there, and 
she might let him blow the flute to tell the news to 
Dick, she thought as she watched the curtains at her 
window blowing in a little breeze back and forth, back 
and forth. 

Then all at once she seemed to be deep, deep, deep 
down in a dungeon under the Laird’s house. Jock 
Barefoot was there, too, hidden in a tangle of briars 
and vines and bushes. She was trying to get him out 
but the faster she broke the branches away, the faster 
they grew. It was terrible to see them grow, and while 
she was tearing at them and pulling them down the 
door of the dungeon opened, and there came the Laird 
with a great chopper to cut off her head. 

“You shall not do it! You shall not do it! My 
father, the minister, will not let you,” screamed Kirsty 
springing up, and to her surprise she found herself in 
her own bed in her own room brandishing Dick’s flute 
in her hand. The curtains were still blowing in the 
wind, but instead of the moon that had lighted her to 


74 JOCK BAREFOOT 

bed the sun was shining. Dear me! Dear me! She 
had slept through all the excitement and missed all the 
fun. And what about poor Dick waiting this weary 
while for news! 

She could not dress fast enough. And such a time 
as she had with buttons that would not go into button¬ 
holes, and strings that got themselves into hard knots. 
It must be early, though. When she opened her door 
not a sound could be heard in the house. She tiptoed 
past her mother’s room to the guest room beyond, and 
peeped in cautiously. Why the bed was empty! There 
wasn’t so much as a wrinkle in the covers to show 
that it had been used. 

Not knowing what to think she ran down the stairs 
to the kitchen. No one was there. Then to the study 
where to her surprise a lamp was still burning. Yes, 
and there was her father fast asleep with his head on 
an open book. Could it be that nothing had hap¬ 
pened ! 

Kirsty opened the front door with caution and 
went into the garden past the orderly rows of gilly 
flowers and stock, past the currant bushes, past the 
broom bushes to the playplace. 

Well, the sweets were all gone—every one of them. 
Jock had come, but if this were true what about An¬ 
drew MacAndrew and all the fine plan? 



JOCK BAREFOOT 75 

He could not catch him and he’s run after him, 
thought Kirsty, unless it really wasn’t Jock but a—no, 
no, she must not even think of the Little Good Peo¬ 
ple, that was next to believing in them, her mother 
said. 

All at once a heavy sound came to Kirsty’s ears, 
a kind of rumbling, grumbling, growling noise. Grrr- 
rrumph! Grrrrrumph! She must go back to the house 
and call her father. Something terrible was happening 
behind the broom bushes. There came the sound 
louder than ever. GRRRRRUMPH! Kirsty stood 
still as a stone and listened. Could it be? Could it be? 

Suddenly she darted behind the bushes to the pear 
tree where the steward had stationed himself. There 
he lay stretched out on his back and snoring till it was 
a wonder that he had not driven every bird from the 
garden. And on his head instead of the woolen night 
cap was a bright red kerchief like the ones the gypsies 
wore! 


CHAPTER VII 


Beta, the gypsy girl, came to the Manse the very 
day that the great plan had failed. Kirsty who was sit¬ 
ting in her playplace spied her standing at a little 
wicket gate that opened from a lane into the garden, 
and went to meet her. 

She did not know her name then, and if anyone 
had told her that she and the gypsy would soon be 
friends, Kirsty would have found it hard to believe. 

Neither of the children spoke at first but stood look¬ 
ing shyly at each other. Kirsty could not keep from 
wondering how it would seem to be dressed in a red 
petticoat and yellow bodice instead of a long-sleeved 
frock and a pinafore like her own. She wondered, too, 
why the gypsy child’s hair was allowed to fly about her 
face without a ribbon ’round it to keep it smooth. But 
perhaps she did not have a ribbon, and Kirsty had 
three. Almost before she knew what she was doing 
she spoke some of her thoughts aloud. 

“Would you like for me to give you a ribbon for 
your hair? You can take the one you like.” 

The little gypsy’s mouth spread in a smile. Put- 

76 


JOCK BAREFOOT 77 

ing her hand in a small velvet bag that hung at her 
waist, she brought out a narrow strip of crimson cloth 
and tied it on her head in the same fashion that Kirsty’s 
hair-ribbon was tied. 

“Now, pretty little lady, may Beta, the gypsy, 
come in?” she asked. 

“You may come in,” said Kirsty who was not used 
to compliments, “but I am not a lady, only the min¬ 
ister’s lass. And I’m not pretty, just bonny sometimes, 
my mother says.” Beta laughed at this. 

“You are a lady,” she said softly, “for you wear 
fine clothes and have a kind heart. And ye are pretty 
for your hair is gold like the broom-bloom.” 

She opened the gate and stepped inside as she 
spoke, and Kirsty thought it was time to ask her er¬ 
rand. 

“Have you come to see my father, the minister?” 

“No,” said Beta, shaking her head. “It is not the 
minister but yourself I have come for. My grand¬ 
mother has something to say that she will not tell to 
anyone but you. And you must go to her for she’s 
over old to come to you.” 

“I’ll go if my father will let me,” said Kirsty, “and 
it’s maybe that he will. He isn’t frightened of things 
like my mother, and she’s not at home.” She was about 
to lead the visitor to the house but she stopped to add, 


78 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“He’ll ask you questions but you need not be afraid. 
He’s kind to everybody.” 

“I have answers,” said Beta confidently. “My 
grandmother gave them to me.” 

She was not as excited as Kirsty as they went into 
the minister’s study, and her answers to his questions 
were clearly spoken. 

“Where do you wish Kirsty to go?” the minister 
asked first. 

“As far and no farther than the Gypsies’ Dingle,” 
Beta told him. 

“What is your grandmother’s name?” 

“Beta, the gypsy queen, though some call her Beta, 
the Old,” the little girl replied. 

“What is your own name?” 

“Little Beta or maybe Betakin.” 

“May I not go with my little daughter to the 
Dingle?” 

“No, my grandmother will not speak unless Kirsty 
comes alone, but I was to tell you that she will come to 
no harm,” Beta assured him. 

“Do you know anything about the secret?” the 
minister’s questions continued. 

“Only what my grandmother has said.” 

“And what was that?” Kirsty’s father wanted to 
know. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 79 

Beta’s reply was that it was something that Kirsty 
and the minister wished to know, but that they would 
never know, maybe, unless the little girl was allowed 
to go to the Dingle. 

Kirsty stood by all this while, listening and hoping 
that her father would give his consent to the gypsy’s 
plan. There was no use for her to plead with him, for 
he would do exactly what he thought was right and 
nothing else. He was thinking earnestly, too, and 
maybe praying, for his head was bowed. It seemed a 
long time, though it was really only a few minutes, be¬ 
fore he looked up and said quietly. 

“I will let her go.” 

He kissed Kirsty and watched at the gate as she 
hurried off with Beta, and if there was any fear in his 
heart he did not show it to her. 

The way that the children took to the gypsy camp 
was a wild one. No highway nor smooth paths for 
their feet! They went through fern and bracken and 
heather and furse, chattering all the time like mag¬ 
pies. Soon they had heard all that there was to hear 
of each other. Kirsty’s life seemed very quiet and dull 
to her beside the tales that Beta had to tell of wander¬ 
ing here and there, sometimes in towns and cities, and 
sometimes by the ocean itself. Beta had no playthings 
like dolls and doll dishes, but she had a colt of her own, 


8 o JOCK BAREFOOT 

a beautiful brown colt with a white star on his fore¬ 
head, and because of this he was named for a star, 
Arcturus. She would show him to Kirsty. 

The minister’s little girl began to think that she 
would like to be a gypsy and sleep in a tent, or per¬ 
haps with nothing but the sky overhead. When she 
told this to her companion, Beta did not seem to be 
surprised. 

“I know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking that I’d 
like to be a lady and live in a house with a fine roof 
to keep the rain off, but I’d soon be longing for the 
woods and the bonny moorlands.” 

Yes, and now that she thought about it, Kirsty 
would never be willing to be a gypsy unless her father 
and mother were gypsies too, which was a thing that 
she could not even imagine. 

Their feet had kept up with their tongues, and they 
were soon at the dingle where everything was noise and 
confusion. Dogs were barking, children were laugh¬ 
ing or crying, and young people were singing, all at 
the same time. The men were busy at their tinkering, 
and the women tended a brew that was cooking in a 
big iron pot hung on three poles above a fire, or washed 
their clothes at a little stream of water. 

Most of these had a smile of greeting for the chil¬ 
dren as they passed, and one woman called out to Beta, 


JOCK BAREFOOT 81 

“The old one is waiting for you. She sent but now to 
ask if you were in sight.” 

A little farther on horses were tethered to graze 
by the stream, and Beta pointed out her colt. He was 
beautiful, but not even for such a pet would Kirsty 
be a gypsy now. She was already homesick for her 
mother’s kitchen with its white sanded floor and well 
scrubbed pans. 

There was little time to think or speak, for Beta 
hurried her on to the place where the gypsy queen 
sat under a great tree a little way off from the camp. 
Kirsty recognized her as the old woman who had re¬ 
proved the Laird on the morning at the castle, though 
she seemed very different now. There was no anger 
nor bitterness in her face, only the pleasant look that 
grandmothers mostly have. And she sat so quietly with 
her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed, that 
Kirsty thought she must be asleep. She stopped and 
looked at Beta to see if they should go on but the gypsy 
child nodded. 

“She’s blind, but you might not care if she touches 
your face and hands to acquaint herself with ye,” Beta 
whispered. 

The sound of their coming had already reached 
the old woman’s ears, and she called to know if Beta 
had done her errand. 


82 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

“She is here, Granny,” answered Beta. “Kirsty’s 
here and she is not afraid of gypsies.” 

“I kenned her heart was right,” said the crone 
stretching out her hand till it reached Kirsty and passed 
softly over her face. “I kenned that she would have 



“I kenned her heart was right,” said the crone. 


no fear. And she will never rue the day she took the 
part of the poor gypsies. Call your father, Beta, and 
bid him bring the token.” 

A man, whose clothes seemed finer and even gayer 
than those worn by the other gypsies, came quickly at 
the child’s bidding. He handed the old woman a 
broken copper coin which she, in turn, gave to Kirsty. 











JOCK BAREFOOT 83 

“Whenever ye are in need of help, bring or send 
this to me or mine and help will come, though it be 
through storm or flood,” she said, “and a blessing goes 
with it.” 

She motioned for the others to leave her alone with 
the child, and when they were out of hearing distance 
she drew Kirsty nearer and whispered rapidly a kind 
of doggerel rhyme: 

Seek ye the lad without the shoon. 

Go look for him by light of moon 
For he who would from mortals hide 
With the fairy folk must bide. 

She repeated this rhyme until Kirsty had every 
word of it by heart, but she would not explain its mean- 
ing. 

“I cannot, and keep faith with one I will not name,” 
she said sinking back on her pillows. And Beta came 
running to lead Kirsty away. 

“The minister is waiting for you,” she said laugh¬ 
ing. “One of our folks saw him pacing the road yon¬ 
der and I had thought to see him here. My father was 
not over-anxious for me to do my granny’s errand and 
I knew yours would be no better.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


Kirsty was scarcely safe at home again when the 
Laird came driving up to the door to ask the minister’s 
advice. 

“What shall be done about the laddie now?” he 
said as soon as he was in the house. “It is beyond all 
thought that he should go roaming and frolicking over 
the country side taking up with gypsies and nobody- 
knows-who. I’m thinking the Baillie will have to take 
a hand in finding him.” 

“As for that,” said the minister, “I believe I know 
pretty well where he is.” When the Laird looked at 
him in astonishment, he repeated the gypsy queen’s 
rhyme which Kirsty had lost no time in telling him. 

He who would from mortals hide. 

Must with fairy folk abide. 


“Stuff! Nonsense!” cried the Laird. “Would ye 
have me believing in fairies, and ye the minister? It’s 
all gypsy patter.” 

“Still,” said the minister, “I think there is meaning 


JOCK BAREFOOT 


85 



in it. There are no Little Good People to be sure, but, 
as I understand it, the old gypsy mother is trying to 
tell us that Jock Barefoot is in the Glen of the Fairies.” 
“The very place,” exclaimed the Laird. “I won- 

























86 JOCK BAREFOOT 

der we did not think of it before. There are caves 
there and hidey-holes for a dozen laddies. I have been 
in them myself when I was young. We’ll soon have 
him now. I’ll send this very day to search the glen 
from end to end.” 

Strange to say, the minister was reluctant to agree 
to this. 

“Wait a little,” he advised. “And the laddie may 
come home himself. He is having a fine play now and 
doing no harm, but he’ll weary of it, and all the sooner 
if he’s not harried or driven.” 

“He’ll go hungry and lie hard,” objected the Laird, 
but the minister was not of that opinion. 

“Not while summer is here,” he said. 

“And I’ll leave him his bannocks in the play- 
place,” put in Kirsty. The Laird, who was never too 
ready to give up his own plans, began to smile now. 

“I have it! I have it!” he shouted. “Andrew Mac- 
Andrew shall feed him. I’ll send him every night to 
the glen with a bit of supper in a basket to hang on a 
bush or set on a stone. The laddie’ll find it out and 
know it is for him. It’s likely he’ll play he’s Bonny 
Prince Charlie who had to lie hidden so long with 
nothing but what was smuggled to him.” 

“And he’ll know he has friends watching over 
him,” said the minister. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 87 

He and the Laird were like boys themselves as they 
settled Jock Barefoot’s affairs to their own liking. He 
would have made a bed of moss and heather, they 
thought. And he could catch fish for himself, as well 
as for Granny Blair, in a little stream that ran through 
the glen, and feast on berries as long as they lasted. 

“He’ll do well enough with us to help him,” said 
the Laird, “but it must a’ be kept secret or we’ll have 
the whole village spying about us.” 

“Not in the Fairies’ Glen,” exclaimed Kirsty. 
“There’s nobody goes that way if he can go another, 
and Andrew MacAndrew will not like it either.” 

“Andrew MacAndrew MacPherson goes where 
he is sent,” thundered the Laird, though he did not 
convince Kirsty. 

“You’ll have to tell him that Jock Barefoot’ll go 
hungry maybe unless he takes him his supper,” she 
suggested, and she was right. 

Let the Laird roar as loud as Sir Arthur O’bower 
in the nursery rhyme, the steward would not go to the 
glen. He did not believe in fairies, oh no, but he could 
not abide the tales that were told of them. There was 
a man who had been pinched black and blue for noth¬ 
ing more than stepping on a fairy ring. He was never 
the same afterwards. And a woman who brushed away 


88 JOCK BAREFOOT 

a spider’s web, which turned out to be fairy lace, could 
never knit again without dropping her stitches. 

“There’s no word of truth in any of it,” said An¬ 
drew MacAndrew, “but I’m cautious. After dusk I 
stay at home.” 

“Then Jock Barefoot must go hungry,” said the 
Laird remembering Kirsty’s advice. He chuckled to 
see how quickly it worked, though the steward was 
far from admitting that he was tender-hearted. He 
would go to the glen once, and no more, to prove to 
the Laird that it was foolish to waste good food on 
corbies and curlews, as well as to show that he was not 
afraid. 

“But there’s no laddie would stay in such a place,” 
he declared. 

After his first venture, however, he began to feel 
great pride in the undertaking, and planned all sorts 
of devices to give Jock his suppers without discovery. 

Strange things might have been seen then about 
the Glen of the Fairies, if anybody had gone that way, 
little well-covered pots of porridge sitting on a flat 
stone, baskets hung on a low limb of a tree, or a slab 
of gingerbread wrapped in gay paper growing, as it 
were, in a thorn bush. 

The steward and the Laird, too, were never tired 
of planning for the poor orphan laddie, as Andrew 


JOCK BAREFOOT 89 

Mac Andrew always called Jock. It was a sad day if 
he had to report that a sweetmeat, or perhaps a cake, 
had not been found. 

“I mistrust I hid it over-well,” he would lament. 

For the most part, though, the supplies were gone 
when the steward went with more. And that Jock 
Barefoot, and not the crows, got them the old men 
were sure, for the bowls and pots were always re¬ 
turned as well washed as even the minister’s wife could 
have wished. 

The Laird enjoyed all of his dinners these days, 
and when a specially nice dish was brought to the table 
he was sure to say, “Jock Barefoot must have some of 
this.” 

One plan succeeding so well, he soon had another. 
Andrew MacAndrew must take a plaid to the glen, 
one of the Laird’s own red, blue and green tartans. 
There was a nip of cold in the air sometimes, and Jock 
Barefoot must have something warm for cover and 
comfort. 

The plaid hung on the bushes for a day or so flap¬ 
ping in the wind, but at last it disappeared and An¬ 
drew MacAndrew brought the news. 

“He’s taken it. He was a bit backward at first 
but he’s clever. He knew very well it was for him.” 


90 JOCK BAREFOOT 

Now nothing would do but that the village tailor 
must make a suit of clothes for Jock Barefoot. 

“He must not run about in rags like a child that 
has no friends to care for him,” said the Laird, and 
for the size the minister’s wife was consulted. 

“You’d better have Davy Davit measured,” she 
advised, at once, “for it was Davy’s outgrowns that 
Jock always wore.” 

Davy Davit was not at all unwilling to accom¬ 
modate the Laird, especially when he was rewarded 
by a bright new shilling. 

“Andrew MacAndrew tellit the tailor that the 
clothes were for a laddie who could not come to fit 
them,” he reported to his playfellows. 

Robin Mucklewraith had this to say, “There’s 
more to it than ye think. It’s queer!” 

The suit, which was a bright blue cloth with brass 
buttons, was carried to the glen a piece at a time. 

“If I should take them a’ at once the laddie would 
be fairly knocked down with pride,” the steward ex¬ 
plained, so it was not until the trousers, or “breeks” as 
he called them, disappeared that the coat was left in 
the glen. There was a good deal of noise among the 
birds on the day that it hung stretched out over the 
bracken like a new kind of scarecrow, but by next 
morning it was gone. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 91 

“Now,” said the steward, “if he so much as shows 
himself for a moment in the bonny blue clothes I’ll 
spot him.” 

Wherever Jock was he kept well hidden in the day. 
He only came out at night to do a good deed for 
Granny Blair or some other friend, or to play a prank 
on a playmate. The Laird took great delight in every 
report that was brought, and all the more because the 
village people still gave credit to the fairies for Jock’s 
doings. 

“He will have the laugh on all of them yet,” he 
said one day when he had stopped to consult the min¬ 
ister’s wife about a pair of boots, red-topped boots, 
that he was planning to have made for the boy. 

“Whose foot will do for the fitting?” he asked anx¬ 
iously but it was a question that could not be answered 
hastily. There was Davy Davit to be sure, or Jamie, 
though there was no trusting feet. Robin Muckle- 
wraith’s might be best even if they were a trifle 
large. 

“Better too large than too small,” said the minister’s 
wife, “and the laddie’s feet will have grown with all 
his running about. It would be a pity to cramp them 
and he not liking shoes besides.” 

“Do not tell me that he will not like boots. Every 
laddie in his senses likes boots,” roared the Laird. But 


92 JOCK BAREFOOT 

he took no more pleasure in his plan till Kirsty as¬ 
sured him that Jock would be terribly proud of his 
boots, whether he wore them or not. 

“He’s never had new ones, I’m thinking,” she said. 
The Laird was all eagerness then. 

“We’ll give him plenty of room for his toes,” he 
declared in high good humor and nothing would do 
but that Robin must be sent for without delay, though 
there was nobody harder to find. He might be wad¬ 
ing in the mill stream, or he might be bird-nesting 
though his mother had forbidden that, or he might 
be in a dozen other places. 

“You could leave word with Mrs. Mucklewraith,” 
suggested the minister’s wife, but that was too slow a 
way for the Laird. 

“Why shouldn’t you ride with me to find him?” he 
asked Kirsty, who was so taken back by the thought of 
such a thing that she had no answer at all but, “O!” 
To ride in the Laird’s carriage behind those high-step¬ 
ping horses was beyond all words. “O!” she said 
again, “O.” 

The Laird understood very well, but he pretended 
not to see how pleased she was. 

“Come away then,” he said in his usual abrupt 
manner. “I’ve no time to be wasting on boots for run¬ 
away boys.” He would not even wait for her pina¬ 
fore to be changed nor her hair smoothed. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 93 

“She is well enough as she is,” he told her mother 
and what he said was true. Kirsty was never one to 
get herself mussed and untidy. And she sat beside 
the Laird as if she had been riding in carriages all the 
days of her life. 

It made a stir in the village when she passed by 
and one naughty boy made bold to call: 

“ Kirsty, Kirsty, have a care 
Or you will soon be—you know where.” 

He pointed openly to the churchyard which served 
as the village graveyard, but Kirsty turned her head 
the other way. 

“My father says boys do not think before they 
speak,” she explained to the Laird, for she was full of 
happy chatter as they rode along. She pointed out 
everything and everybody to him. 

“There’s Granny Blair. She’s the one Jock stays 
with mostly when he’s home. And there’s Crippled 
Dick blowing the flute that I tellit you about. And 
there’s his big brother who is going to America to 
make money to buy Dick a fine chair with red velvet 
cushions. And there’s Robin Mucklewraith—” 

“Stop the horses,” the Laird commanded and al¬ 
most before this could be done he was leaning from 
the window and calling: “Robin Mucklewraith, come 
here.” 


94 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

Robin was engaged in playing marbles and the 
game was at the stage where he had no mind to stop 
for anybody’s calling. 

“For what do you want me?” he answered, taking 
a careful aim with his taw as he spoke, and giving a 
whoop of delight as the marbles in the ring scattered 
before his charge. 

The Laird’s face grew red with indignation, and 
he was ready to jump out of the carriage to seize the 
impudent laddie when Kirsty whispered, “If you speak 
angry-like he’ll run the other way.” 

Even then the Laird had to sputter and growl a 
little before he could bring himself to ask in a reason¬ 
able tone, “Do you want to make a shilling, Robin 
Mucklewraith, or do you not?” 

“What to do?” demanded Robin who was not to 
be bribed from a victory by shillings or anything else. 
The other children looked at him in amazement and 
Kirsty hastened to remonstrate. 

“I wonder at you putting questions to the Laird 
when all he wants is to give you a shilling for letting 
the shoemaker fit his last to your foot. It’s Davy Davit 
that he should be asking.” 

“Oh, well,” said Robin, who had the grace to look 
ashamed, “since it’s yourself and the Laird, Kirsty, 
I’ll let the shoemaker do the fitting for nothing at all 



“For what do you want me?” he answered. 











96 JOCK BAREFOOT 

if you’ll wait for me to knock Jamie Ferguson out. 
He’s the only marble left.” 

Kirsty turned a little doubtfully to see what the 
Laird thought of this but he was leaning forward with 
interest. 

“Do not let yourself get fashed, laddie,” he called. 
“We’ll wait.” 

The next instant Jamie’s marble—it was the very 
white and blue one that Jock Barefoot had thought to 
buy—went spinning out of the ring and into the gut¬ 
ter. And the Laird was shouting at the top of his voice, 
“Well done, Robin Mucklewraith, well done.” 

Robin took the praise calmly enough, but when it 
came to climbing into the Laird’s carriage he lost 
some of his bold looks. And he hadn’t a word to say 
until, just as they reached the shoemaker’s door, he 
astonished the Laird and Kirsty and maybe himself 
by blurting out, “Is it for Jock Barefoot that you’re 
wanting shoon?” 


CHAPTER IX 


For some time it had been told in the village that 
the Laird had gone daft because of his treatment of an 
orphan boy. The first to notice anything out of the 
way was Mistress Margot, at whose shop the steward 
bought sweets so often. 

“The Laird has turned child in his old age,” she 
told her neighbors. “Andrew MacAndrew took him a 
gingerbread horse yesterday, and to-day it was a candy 
bool.” 

Then it leaked out, through the castle servants, that 
the Laird was sending the steward on mysterious er¬ 
rands with food and what-not wrapped up in bundles. 
Nobody was positive where he went, until a shepherd 
looking for a lost sheep came upon a little covered pot 
close to the entrance of the Fairies’ Glen. And when 
he lifted the lid what should he see inside but broth, 
still hot. He clapped the cover on and left the place, 
sheep or no sheep, to tell in the village what he had 
seen. 

“The Laird thinks that the Little Good People have 


97 


98 JOCK BAREFOOT 

Jock Barefoot, poor man,” said Mistress Margot when 
she heard the tale, “and he’s afraid the laddie will go 
hungry on fairy food.” 

Very much the same reasons were given when the 
tailor made the fine blue suit with brass buttons. It 
was fair pitiful, people said, to think of putting out 
food and having clothes made for a laddie that was 
dead and gone. But no doubt Andrew MacAndrew 
had to humor his Lairdship. 

The steward himself kept the secret as tight as if 
it were locked up in a strong-box and the key thrown 
away. If anybody asked him why he went out so late 
and so often he replied, “The Laird will tell you if 
you ask him maybe.” He felt very sure that nobody 
would ask the Laird anything, not for a golden purse. 

Nobody did ask till the day Robin Mucklewraith 
rode to have his feet measured. He got no answer to 
his question, but that only made him the surer that he 
was right. And he thought of other things, too. As 
soon as he came from the shoemaker’s he called J amie 
Ferguson and Davy Davit into a corner. 

“The Laird and Andrew MacAndrew are trying 
to toll Jock Barefoot away from the Little People with 
sweeties and fine togs,” he whispered. And, as soon as 
they had taken that in, he added, “There’s somebody 
ought to go and get him.” 


JOCK BAREFOOT 99 

“Who?” asked Davy Davit, who would have been a 
timid boy if it had not been for his bold comrades. 

“Ourselves!” answered Robin. “I’ve thought it all 
out. We’ll not tell our mothers or anybody. We’ll slipit 
off as if we were going to play, and then we’ll run like 
blazes and not stop till we get to the Glen.” 

“When do you mean?” asked Davy, growing pale 
to the lips at the idea of such an adventure. 

“The first night that the moon is bright,” said 
Robin making a rhyme unexpectedly, though now 
that it turned out that way he took it as a sign of good 
luck. 

“We’ll get Jock Barefoot,” he told his willing lis¬ 
teners. 

The corner of Mistress Margot’s shop was set as 
a meeting place, and, on the next night but one, the 
boys were there. Davy Davit was the first to come be¬ 
cause he did not want the others to think he was 
afraid, and Robin, the last, sauntering along as if he 
were not going anywhere at all. No one paid any at¬ 
tention to them but they took all sorts of precautions, 
starting in the opposite direction to the one they in¬ 
tended going, and turning back through lanes and 
by-ways and around houses. By the time they reached 
the moor’s edge they were as nervous as flittermice. 
Everything startled them. Was it possible that the 


/ 


ioo JOCK BAREFOOT 

lank black shadows that went before them belonged 
to themselves! Davy Davit was short and thin, Robin 
was long and thin, and Jamie Ferguson, like Jack 
Sprat’s pig, was not very little and not very big. Yet 
here were these shadows all of a size and tall as the 
beanpole in the old story. It almost seemed as if there 
were six, instead of three, going to find Jock Barefoot. 
And there was no use to run. The faster they went 
the faster those shadows hurried along. And what 
was that tall white thing yonder? It was a whole min¬ 
ute maybe before Jamie Ferguson called out that it 
was the Mucklestane, and they then could breathe 
freely again. 

The Mucklestane, which was a great white boul¬ 
der, stood at the opening of the glen, and now that they 
were so near, Robin began to unfold his plans. 

“The Little Good People will let Jock out to 
stretch his legs when the moon’s up,” he said, just as 
if he were well acquainted with the habits of fairies, 
“and we’ll just lie quiet and wait till he’s as close to us 
as I am to Jamie, and then—” he stopped to consider 
the next step so long that Davy Davit called out nerv¬ 
ously, “Then what?” 

“We’ll grabit him,” said Robin, “ ’round the ankles 
for that’s the best hold there is.” 

“But suppose he does not want to come with us?” 


JOCK BAREFOOT ioi 

asked Jamie, who for all his love and admiration for 
Robin had his own thoughts. “To live with the Little 
People might be grand.” 

Robin took high ground at this. “You’d better not 
let the minister hear you, Jamie Ferguson,” he cried. 
“He’s awful set against such talk.” 

The little valley, that was called the Glen of the 
Fairies, lay among cliffs and rocks. It was a wild 
enough place even in the broad daylight. The boys 
had more than once taken daring peeps at it on their 
roamings over the moor, but never had it seemed so 
eerie and forbidding as now. To their excited fancy 
the very stillness was terrifying. The tangle of bushes 
and bracken and vines that grew on every side might 
hide anything, and, at the sudden call of a home-fly¬ 
ing rook, they fairly tumbled backward. 

“I will not go inside,” cried Davy, catching Rob¬ 
in’s sleeve. “There’s nobody can make me.” 

“Do not drag me back,” retorted Robin. “It’s 
maybe best for us to go all together, and do you not 
run till I do.” 

They stood huddled close to each other till Jamie 
had the thought of lying down in the heather, not in¬ 
side the glen but close enough to see or hear anything 
that might happen there, and yet far enough away to 
have a good start if they wanted to run. 


102 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

Soon they were lying so snug and quiet that An¬ 
drew MacAndrew MacPherson, who was a little late 
with Jock’s supper, stumbled over them. He fairly 
tumbled in their midst before they knew he was any¬ 
where near. They were too frightened to move, and, 
for that matter, so was the steward. He felt certain 
that he had fallen into a trap set by the fairies. Then 
Davy Davit began to scream. 

“A bogie! Oh, a bogie!” 

“Oh, ho,” cried the steward catching hold of his 
shoulder. “So it is you that it is, Jock Barefoot. And 
do not try your capers with me. I have you fast.” 

“You have not! Let me go!” screamed Davy strug¬ 
gling to be free. 

“Do not be afraid, laddie,” said the steward sooth¬ 
ingly. “It is only your old friend Andrew MacAndrew 
MacPherson that brings ye your supper. Come away 
home, laddie, come away.” 

It was as hard to persuade him that the boy he held 
was not Jock Barefoot, as it was to convince Davy 
that the steward was not a bogie. By the time Jamie 
and Robin had straightened things out, and had gath¬ 
ered up the bannocks and scones that Andrew Mac¬ 
Andrew had scattered in his fall, they were ready to 
give up their project and go home. 

“We’ll not see Jock Barefoot this night with all the 



He fairly tumbled in their midst . 









io 4 JOCK BAREFOOT 

screeling and screeching,” said Robin glowering at 
Davy. The whole adventure would have ended right 
then and there if the steward had not insisted that Jock 
would come for his supper. Just let Andrew hang the 
basket on a branch and be off and the boys would see 
what they would see. And as for the noise, the laddie 
was likely to think it was nothing but old Andrew 
MacAndrew MacPherson at his grumbling, and that 
he was used to hearing. 

He could not stay to watch with them but he wished 
them well. 

“If you once get your hands on him, do not for the 
love of me let go,” he begged as he left them, “for it 
is high time to put an end to such doings.” 

After he had gone the boys lay down in the heather 
again. Since they were there they might as well stay, 
Robin decided. 

“But not a sound from you, Davy Davit,” he 
warned, “if you want to come here again.” 

The moon was so bright now that the whole glen 
was filled with a silvery mist. It seemed a fairy place 
indeed. Even Davy began to lose some of his fear in 
such a peaceful spot, and all three were hopeful that 
before long they would spy their old playmate slip¬ 
ping out for his goodies. 

Robin had other hopes which he had not told his 


JOCK BAREFOOT 105 

friends. Perhaps they might see more than Jock Bare¬ 
foot. No matter how much they talked in the village 
of the Little Good People, nobody, from the oldest to 
the youngest there, had ever seen a fairy. What a grand 
tale it would be if he and Jamie and Davy could catch 
a glimpse—just a glimpse—of one. As to what they 
looked like he was divided between two opinions. 
They might be, as some people said, wee little men in 
green coats and red caps, or they might have wings. 
He was about to ask Jamie what he thought when he 
saw something moving on a rock a little way down 
the glen. 

At first he thought it was a bush stirring in the 
wind, then an animal. But as he watched, with a grow¬ 
ing fear in his heart, the figure of a little man climbed 
into view. He had horns on his head like the antlers 
of a deer, or so it looked to Robin, and four legs and 
four feet! Two of them in boots began to wave in the 
air above the creature’s head, and two bare ones 
pranced on the rock. A bogie, and no mistake this 
time! 

“Run! Run! Run!” cried Robin scrambling to 
his feet and dragging Davy after him. Jamie fol¬ 
lowed, and not a moment too soon. They were not 
well started when a terrible cry rang through the night: 

“Who-Be-Ye-e-e-e-e-e? Who-Be-Ye-e-e-e-e ?” 



106 JOCK BAREFOOT 

It sounded just as if the bogie were asking them, 
“Who-Be-Ye-e-e-e-e?” 

“Do not answer, but run,” cried Robin. His com¬ 
panions needed no urging. Davy, who was sometimes 
last in a race, was first now, and Jamie went over the 
heather with great leaps and bounds. And behind 
them the bogie still called, “Who-Be-Ye-e-e-e-e-e?” 

It was not until they were beyond the sound of that 
awful voice, and well into the town, that they dared to 
stop and draw breath. 

Now that they were safe the adventure took on 
another color, and Robin would have had his grand 
tale to tell after all if it had not been for Jamie Fergu¬ 
son. 

“I’m thinking,” he said, “that there was a look of 
Jock Barefoot about yon bogie.” 

“But Jock hasna four feet and legs,” objected Davy 
Davit. 

“No, but he has arms and hands.” 

“And boots,” cried Robin suddenly. “The shoe¬ 
maker finished them on Tuesday and Andrew Mac An¬ 
drew fetched them away.” 

Davy, to whom all this talk was a mystery, had an¬ 
other question. “Why should Jock Barefoot wear 
boots on his hands?” 

“To frighten folks like ourselves,” said Robin, 


JOCK BAREFOOT 107 

speaking with great bitterness. “And make silly loons 
of them.” 

His companions had never seen him so worsted 
before, but by the time the parting place was reached 
he had recovered himself enough to propose a plan 
that cheered him mightily. They must make a pledge 
to keep the whole thing secret. He would tell them 
just what to say, and then they would repeat it all to¬ 
gether. 

It was awesome to hear him, too, as he whispered, 
“We, Robin Mucklewraith, Jamie Ferguson, and 
Davy Davit, do solemnly promise and vow never to 
let out where we have been, nor what we have seen and 
heard this night, and hope the bogie will catch us if 
we do.” 

What bogie he meant he did not explain, though 
that made no difference. Jamie and Davy were too 
much impressed by his high sounding words to ask 
questions. 


CHAPTER X 


The boys kept their secret well, though Davy Davit 
weakened when his mother declared that he must be 
dosed with camomile tea for his pale looks. 

“And ye’re tossing about in your sleep and calling 
out for that feckless laddie, Robin Mucklewraith,” 
she said. 

The reason for all this was on the tip of Davy’s 
tongue, but in the end he swallowed the dose and told 
nothing. It was only when he and Robin and Jamie 
could get away into corners with their heads close to¬ 
gether, that they dared so much as mention the Glen 
of the Fairies. Yet if they had but known it others 
besides themselves had adventures in the very same 
place. 

One of these was Larry Lickleladle, the young fid¬ 
dler. Nobody could play livelier tunes than Larry, 
nor sing sweeter songs, and when he grew tired of the 
old ones he could make new ones as easily as Mistress 
Margot could make her gingerbread toys, or so it was 
told. And besides his fiddling and singing he was a 

108 


JOCK BAREFOOT 109 

fine fellow whom everybody liked. No merry-making 
was complete unless Larry and his fiddle were there. 

On the night after the boys were frightened from 
the glen, the fiddler was playing at a wedding supper, 
and playing his best. His bow went dancing over the 
fiddle strings as if it were alive, and nobody who heard 
the music could keep his feet still. 

“He’s as good a fiddler as Donald Calder was be¬ 
fore he heard the fairies sing,” said one of the company. 
“Afterwards he was always trying to remember the 
words and the tune of their song and this he could not 
do. The Little Good People took care of that.” 

“I wish I could hear a fairy’s song,” said Larry 
Lickladle. “It would never get away from me I’ll 
promise you.” 

“Oh, it’s all very well to make such wishes when 
you have a roof over your head, and four walls around 
you and plenty to keep you company,” laughed an¬ 
other lad. “But I’ll wager you a new shilling that you 
would not go to the Glen of the Fairies at their time of 
night for all the songs that were ever made.” 

“Wouldn’t I?” asked Larry as bold as a popinjay. 
“I’ll go this very night, for there’ll never be a better 
one, and collect the shilling as surely as the cock crows 
for morning.” 

Nothing else was talked of after this, and when the 


IIO 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

wedding feast was done all the wedding guests went 
with Larry to watch him into the glen. 

“If the fairies take you away be sure you leave your 
fiddle and bow, so we may know what’s gone with you,” 
said one of his friends. 

“It’s little you’ll find in a fairy ladle to lick, I’m 
thinking,” teased another and a third had a warning 
to give, “Whatever ye do, don’t look behind ye.” 

But warnings or jesting, Larry paid no attention 
to them except to laugh. 

“If the fairies take me they’ll have to take fiddle 
and all,” he said as he marched away. 

At this end of the Glen stood two birch trees shin¬ 
ing like silver in the moonlight, and when Larry had 
passed them it seemed to him as if he had stepped into 
fairyland itself. The whole place was filled with sil¬ 
very light. The ground under his feet was covered 
with little white flowers, and a stream that ran through 
the bracken was like a twisted ribbon of silver. 

This was all well enough to see, but the Glen would 
have been more to Larry’s liking if there had been even 
so much as a cricket’s chirp to break the quiet. He 
had more than half a mind to play a tune to keep him¬ 
self company. 

He had a curious feeling, too, that someone was 
watching him though he told himself that it was noth- 


111 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

ing but a fancy. It was easy enough to get fancies into 
your head in a place as still as this one. Or it might be 
that some of his teasing companions had followed 
him to play a trick on him. Well, they would not find 
him napping. He was just about to call out that he 
knew they were there, when he heard someone sing¬ 
ing one of his own songs. Oh, ho, so that was the trick? 

“Come away, come away,” he called in great glee. 
“You’ll not be fooling Larry Lickladle this night.” 

The words were scarcely spoken, though, when he 
knew that the voice he heard could not belong to any 
of the wedding company. A child might have sung 
in the same way, but no grown man or woman. The 
words of the song tinkled out like the notes of a little 
bell. 

Have you seen? Have you seen? 

Bonny Ailsie on the green ? 

A wee lass, a fair lass, 

Have you seen? Have you seen? 

Bonny Ailsie on the green. 

In spite of all he had said about wishing to hear 
fairies sing, Larry was very much inclined to run back 
to the nearest house. But his second thought was a 
better one. That the hidden singer was one of the Little 
Good People he felt certain, but why should he, who 


112 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

had been making music ever since he could hold a fid¬ 
dle bow, be afraid of a little elf singing in the night. 

“Well done, little Goodman,” he called, “and, if 
you’ll save your breath till I tune my fiddle, I’ll play 
for your singing.” 

The elf, if elf it were, seemed to agree to this for 
there was not another sound from him till Larry 
scraped the bow across the strings and called out, “Now 
for it!” The fiddler’s courage had all come back to him 
with the first note of the fiddle and when the second 
verse of the song began Larry sang too. 

Have you heard? Have you heard? 

Bonny Ailsie like a bird? 

A gay lass, a blithe lass, 

Have you heard? Have you heard? 

Bonny Ailsie like a bird? 

They sang so well together that as soon as the first 
song came to an end Larry proposed another. He 
started it alone, but the elf joined in as merrily as ever. 

Oh, on my way to Tipple Tine 
The bonny moon began to shine, 

Come laddie, come lass, 

Trip it lightly over the grass. 

Over the grass to Tipple Tine; 

You bring your cake, I’ll bring mine. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 113 

It was not only Larry’s songs that they sang after 
this, but old ones as well. And there is no telling how 
long they might have kept it up, if when they stopped 
to rest, Larry had not asked, “Can you whistle as well 
as sing, Little man?” 

Instantly a voice answered, “I’ll not be whistling 
on the Laird’s land.” And, though Larry called more 
than once and coaxed him with other tunes, not an¬ 
other note would the fay sing that night. 

Larry put his fiddle under his arm and began to 
wish himself at home. Fairies were skittish folks to 
deal with that was plain to see, though why a question 
about whistling should vex an elf or anybody else 
Larry could not guess. It was enough to make any 
man scratch his head and think. 

While he was thinking, he walked along so quickly 
that he would soon have been free of the glen, fairies 
and all, if, just as he reached the Mucklestane, he had 
not looked back. The light in the Glen was fading 
and the mists were gathering fast, but in one clear 
spot he saw what, at any other time or place, he would 
have thought was a child dancing. Shake a leg, wag 
a leg, such jigging it was! Almost without knowing 
what he was about Larry put his fiddle under his chin 
and began to play a tune that he had never played nor 
heard before. Over and over he played it till the moon 


114 JOCK BAREFOOT 

was gone, the dancer had vanished, and the fiddler 
was left to find his way home in the dark. The cocks 
were all crowing when he came to the village street. 
He had earned his shilling, but he did not go to 



Over and over he played it. 


get it. He had no mind to be questioned about the 
night’s venture. 

“If I should tell what I have seen and heard folks 
would think I was out of my head. And maybe I was,” 
he said to himself. 

There was one thing though, Larry had not forgot¬ 
ten the tune that he played, and by and by he made a 
song for it. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 115 

As I was going through Fairy Glen 
1 saw one of the Little Men 
Fiddle, diddle and fiddle dee 
1 played for him and he danced for me — 

OK 1 never shall see such sight again 
As I saw there in the Fairy Glen. 

He did not regret the shilling then, for a new song 
was more than money to Larry Lickladle at any time. 


CHAPTER XI 


The next to go through the Glen of the Fairies was 
a piper called Tall Tammas, but he had his own rea¬ 
sons for keeping quiet about it, and it was no fault of 
his that the story of his adventure got out. 

Tammas was a great brawny man, with a fine pair 
of lungs for his music-making. When he blew his 
best it was said that his bagpipes could be heard as far 
as Next Town and that they would set the dishes there 
rattling on the cupboard shelves. 

The louder he blew the better the children liked it. 
Robin Mucklewraith thought that if the King of 
France and forty thousand men should come march¬ 
ing over the hills to Wraye, Tall Tammas would drive 
them back with a tune, just as he had driven the Laird’s 
Derby ram when he broke from his pasture and came 
charging into the town. Robin was always hoping, 
too, that the piper would let him have a blow on the 
pipes, but so far he had not dared ask, bold and daring 
as he was. It took almost as much courage to face the 
piper when he was vexed as it did to stand up to the 

ii 6 


JOCK BAREFOOT 117 

Laird in one of his tempers, and it was told that the 
piper was not afraid of the Laird or anybody else. 

Certainly he was not afraid of the Good Little Peo¬ 
ple. If he gave them a thought on the night that he 
came to the Glen, it was only as things that children 
clavered about. A man, he was very fond of saying, 
did not fash his brains with old wives’ tales. 

And he did not give a thought to the beauty of the 
place. It was the time for the moon to shine and the 
season for flowers so what else could a body expect 
to see. If his attention had been called to the silvery 
mist that filled the glen, he would likely have answered, 
“Oh, aye, we’ll have a fog before morning. I’ll be 
hasting on.” 

He had come this way because it was late and he 
was seeking a short cut to the village. What with his 
long strides he was already half-way down the glen 
when a saucy voice called out, “Goodnight to you, 
Tall Tammas the piper.” 

The piper whirled about ready to defend himself 
against thieves and robbers, for he could think of no 
other folk who would be wandering in such a lonely 
spot at so late an hour. It was true he was there, but 
he had good reason and was an honest man besides. 
For all his looking he could discover no one, but this 
only made his suspicions a certainty. Who but a thief 


u8 JOCK BAREFOOT 

would hide away, though he was a foolish fellow to 
have called out, thought Tammas. Well, the piper 
was not one to be afraid. The fear should be on the 
other hand as the rascally coward would soon learn. 
Tammas felt bold enough to wrestle with a Welsh 
giant to save the hard-earned pennies which he car¬ 
ried in a sporran, or bag, fastened to his kilt. A chal¬ 
lenge to come out and fight was on the tip of his 
tongue, when his caution bade him go slow. If I cry 
out upon him for a thief he will know I have something 
to be robbed of, he argued to himself. 

Instead of the great words he intended to use he 
called out peaceably, “It is not everyone that is as well 
known as the piper so you’ll take no offence, I’m hop¬ 
ing, if I ask who it is that walks by himself in the Glen 
of the Fairies?” 

“Oh, maybe a kelpie, or maybe one of the Little 
People, or maybe just Jock Barefoot, the poor orphan 
laddie,” answered the voice, though the speaker did not 
appear. 

“Jock Barefoot!” cried the piper bristling with in¬ 
dignation, for like many another he believed that the 
lost lad was long ago dead. To hear his name spoken 
so idly angered him. “Have done with your fooling,” 
he called, casting all caution aside, “and let the dead 
rest.” 

“But for why should you not believe the laddie you 


JOCK BAREFOOT 119 

gave a penny to, and no longer away than New Year’s 
morn?” asked the hidden one. 

In spite of all his courage a cold prickle ran down 
the piper’s back at this. He did not give away enough 
pennies to forget any of them, and that he had paid 
the orphan boy for carrying his pipes for him he re¬ 
membered as if it were yesterday. 

“Eh, sirs,” he whispered to himself. “It’s the lad¬ 
die’s ghostie that I hear.” 

He peered cautiously on every side but nothing 
was there, and, except for a tiny ripple that sounded 
very much like a mischievous giggle, he could have 
believed that he had imagined the whole thing. It was 
plain, beyond mistake, that somebody or something 
was laughing, and laughing at Tall Tammas, which 
was none to the piper’s liking. Yet what could he do? 
This was another thing to frightening rams with a 
rousing tune, or challenging thieves. His bagpipes 
were useless here, and his wits as well. 

Tammas was just considering that the best way out 
might be to take to his heels before worse happened, 
when the voice inquired, “Ye are not frighted, are 
ye?” 

“I never did you any harm while you were living 
so why should I be afraid of your wee ghostie?” asked 
the piper and his own question brought him to his 
senses. Why indeed should the tallest man and the 


120 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

boldest man north of the Border, to say nothing of the 
finest piper, be afraid of a wean like Jock Barefoot, 
dead or alive. 

And he had another thought, besides, for Tall Tam- 
mas, in addition to all the things that have been told of 
him already, and all that he believed of himself, was a 
rare good bargainer. What he had in mind that very 
minute was no less than to make a bargain with the 
ghost. 

“Come away, laddie, come away,” he called coax- 
ingly. “Give me a sight of you and you shall have 
another penny, and a bright new one at that.” 

“Would you make it two?” inquired the voice, after 
a moment of silence. 

“I would,” said Tammas, for the reward for news 
of Jock Barefoot had never been taken down from the 
window of Mistress Margot’s shop where Andrew 
MacAndrew MacPherson had posted it. To lay down 
a tuppence and take up five pounds was a bargain after 
the piper’s own heart. He even hastened to repeat his 
offer, “A tuppence it will be if you are quick.” But 
there was no hurrying this one. 

“Did you say trippence?” he asked, as if there was 
time and to spare. 

“I did not but I will,” said the piper. “Three pen¬ 
nies if you will have done with your clavering.” 


JOCK BAREFOOT 121 

“It is worth a sixpence,” said the voice. “Just think 
of the stir there’ll be when ye tell it at home.” 

The piper had thought of this very thing, but the 
sixpence went hard with him. 

“I’ll not promise it until I have seen you,” he ob¬ 
jected, “for how do I know that you are not that wild 
Robin Mucklewraith at his tricks?” 

“Oh, well then,” said the child, or whatever it was, 
“I’ll gang home with you for nothing at all if you’ll 
come and get me.” 

“But where are you?” cried Tall Tammas, fired 
with the idea of marching into the village with Jock 
Barefoot, for by now he had no thought of ghosts. No, 
this was a live laddie and a lively one, but let the piper 
once lay hold of him and he would not get away in a 
hurry. And what a feather in Tall Tammas’ bonnet 
it would be to bring home the lost child. The king 
himself might hear of it as far away as London Town. 
And perhaps he would send Tammas a medal to wear 
on his coat. 

“Where are you?” he called again. “Tell me that 
and you shall have your sixpence.” 

“You might look behind the whinbush,” came the 
answer promptly enough, but when the bush was 
reached a cry sounded far beyond. 

“Here I am. Why don’t you come and get me?” 


122 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

Tall Tammas laid his bagpipes on a stone, threw 
his plaid aside and went scrambling through bushes 
and over rocks. 

“Where? Where?” he asked breathlessly. 



“But where are youf” cried Tall Tammas . 


“Here! Here!” called his tormentor, always a little 
ahead or a little behind him. 

Never was there such a place as the Fairies’ Glen 
for vines to trip a body up, or thorns to prick a man’s 
face, or stones to bruise an elbow! And never was 









JOCK BAREFOOT 123 

there will-o’-the-wisp as quick and aggravating as this 
goblin or imp or what-not. 

“You may stay with your kelpies and spunkies and 
warlocks for all I care. I’ll look for you no longer!” 
Tammas called more than once, but when the little 
voice pled, “Do not leave me,” the piper would turn 
to the search again. 

The moonlight was fading fast, and the dark that 
comes before dawn was gathering in the glen when the 
voice cried suddenly, “Go you home, Tall Tammas, 
and tell everybody you have spoken with Jock Bare¬ 
foot.” 

But this is just what the piper did not do. He 
marched home in high dudgeon, blowing his pipes so 
loudly and fiercely that more than one of the villagers 
jumped from their beds and ran to their windows to see 
what the matter was, but never a word did anyone hear 
from Tall Tammas about what had happened that 
night in the Glen of the Fairies. 


CHAPTER XII 

Kirsty and Crippled Dick, who knew nothing of 
these happenings, were growing impatient for Jock 
to come home. Every day they made plans to get him 
back, and the laddie was never far from the Laird’s 
thoughts nor the minister’s. Yet there is no telling when 
things would have reached a happy ending if it had 
not been for an old man called Gibbie Greycloak. 

Like Larry and Tall Tammas, Gibbie was a musi¬ 
cian, but the instrument on which he played was a harp. 
Whenever he came to the village with the old grey 
cloak, that gave him his name, wrapped around him, 
and his white hair blowing about his face like a mist, 
the children flocked to hear the wild sweet music that 
he made on his harp, or to listen breathlessly to the 
tales of heroes and goblins and what-not that he told. 
They always thought of him as belonging to the realm 
of fairies and the like, rather than to the world in which 
they themselves lived. But they loved him all the bet¬ 
ter for that. 


124 


JOCK BAREFOOT 125 

There was no reason for the harper to go wander¬ 
ing over the country in the wind and weather. Every¬ 
body knew that Andrew MacAndrew MacPherson 
had offered him a warm corner in one of the Laird’s 
houses. But to roam was more to Gibbie’s liking than 
to sit snug by a fire. Up hill and down dale he went, 
and he found a friend in every place. He was hurrying 
to Wraye one summer evening, when a storm overtook 
him and drove him into the Fairies’ Glen for shelter. 
The wind was so strong that he could scarcely keep on 
his feet, and his old cloak was lashed about him till he 
wondered that it was not torn into shreds. His greatest 
alarm was for his precious harp. He was hastening to 
reach a tree or rock that might shield it when he felt 
a sudden grasp on his cloak. Looking down he spied 
a small ragged boy by his side, though why such a one 
should be in a place that the village people shunned he 
could not imagine. 

“Come away, come away Gibbie Greycloak,” he 
called. “We must get into my castle or the bonny harp 
will be ruined entirely.” 

The old man allowed himself to be led along with¬ 
out a question, though it did occur to him that his com¬ 
panion might be one of the Little Good People who 
were said to take on any form that they pleased. Not 
that this would have made any difference to Gibbie. He 


126 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

had lived too long with dreams and fancies to be afraid 
of a fairy, and besides it was a very friendly voice that 
cautioned or encouraged him at every step. 

“Have a care, Gibbie, there’s a root in the way. It 
is not far to go. We are almost there. You’ll have to 
stoop now but it’s dry as the Laird’s house inside.” 

The next moment they were safe from the storm 
and the little guide was saying, “Wait a bit till I light 
the candle that Andrew MacAndrew MacPherson put 
in my last bundle, and then you’ll see what a fine place 
I have for myself.” 

The light of the candle showed Gibbie Greycloak 
what he had already suspected. He was in one of the 
caves often found in Scotland, and which had served 
as a refuge for many folk in many times. This one was 
under the deep shelf of a cliff, hidden, as he found out 
later, by bushes and bracken and vines. It was as snug 
a hidey-hole as heart could wish. Now that he looked 
well at him, the harper saw that his little friend was no 
uncanny creature, but just Jock Barefoot about whom 
there had been so much stir and sorrow. 

Gibbie had seen the lad many times in the crowd of 
village children. Yes, and he remembered him for an¬ 
other reason. There had been no better listener than 
Jock Barefoot to the old tales and songs. 

In one corner of the cave was a bed of heather, 


JOCK BAREFOOT 127 

partly covered by a plaid of red and blue and green. 
On a stick, which was thrust in a crack of the wall, 
hung a suit of clothes, while just beneath stood a fine 
pair of red-topped boots. 

“They are my Sunday togs,” said Jock Barefoot, 
when he spied the harper looking at them. “Andrew 
MacAndrew MacPherson left them on the whin 
bushes. He brings my supper, too. I have just gotten 
it in, but I have not looked to see what I have.” 

He unwrapped a bundle and took out a handful of 
bannocks, two eggs, a slice of pudding and a ginger¬ 
bread animal of such a shape that it would have been 
hard to name. Soon he had the meal spread neatly on 
a stone, with the candle in the midst, and was inviting 
the harper to eat with him. 

“But first we must ask a blessing,” he told him, “the 
minister will not eat without a blessing and it’s good 
to do as the minister does when you are in the Glen.” 

He was so pleased to have company that he an¬ 
swered all the harper’s questions without hesitation, 
and told him more besides. 

Yes, he had gone with a drover but only because 
he had no money for supper and was so far from home. 

And how did he get so far? Mostly because of a 
man with a gig and a high-stepping horse who had 
offered him a ride. It had seemed a grand thing to sit 



Soon he had the meal spread neatly on a stone. 








JOCK BAREFOOT 129 

in a gig and go whirling along raising a dust on the 
road. They had passed Sandy MacNiel, the village 
carrier, and he had not known Jock. 

And where had he been when the gig-man saw 
him? Oh, maybe halfway to Next Town, he had run 
so fast to get away from the Laird’s temper, though he 
did not think to be gone so long when he started. As 
soon as he got down from the gig he had turned back, 
but everything was strange. He might even have been 
a little frightened, that is, until he met the drover who 
was in need of just such a boy as Jock to help with his 
cattle. 

Jock would have liked nothing better than to go 
whooping and running after cows, if only Robin and 
the rest had been along. And besides he felt very sure 
that Crippled Dick and Kirsty would be wondering 
what had become of him by then. 

He would go no farther than the border, though 
the drover urged him, but he had fine company to travel 
home with, a wild Highland man with bonnet and 
tartan and all. 

“He was fierce to look at but kindly,” said Jock. 

The two of them traveled so fast together that J ock 
would have been home, long, long ago, if he had not 
met up with the gypsies who told him of the reward of¬ 
fered for him. 


130 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

He had been terrified in good earnest when he 
learned of that, and all the more so because nobody 
could tell why the Laird wanted him. He did not dare 
go on but the gypsies hid him. 

Soon he had been like one of themselves, except 
that when they came to towns or villages in their trav¬ 
els, he lay among the pots and pans and bedding in 
the back of a van. Once while he was hiding there he 
had heard talk about himself from someone who came 
peeping and asking questions in hopes of earning the 
Laird’s money. 

“He told it that I was a bandy-legged callant and 
that I had stolen away shoes because I had none of my 
own,” said Jock, indignantly. 

No matter what was told or asked, Jock’s gypsy 
friends would not betray him. He might have been 
with them yet if a great longing to see his own people, 
and the hills and moors and lakes that he loved so well, 
had not made him fairly sick. Laird or no Laird, re¬ 
ward or no reward, he must go home, and the gypsies 
did not try to hinder him. Just as they had welcomed 
him in the beginning, they helped him away. They 
gave him food and oatmeal from their little stores, and 
other gifts which Jock displayed proudly, a knife with 
one good blade, a well-mended pan and a tinderbox. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 131 

Yes, and a handkerchief, but that he had put on An¬ 
drew MacAndrew’s head for a night-cap. 

It was from the gypsies that he got the idea of living 
in the Glen of the Fairies. When she heard of his pur¬ 
pose to go home the gypsy queen had called him to her 
and whispered, 

He who would from mortals hide 
With the fairy folk may bide. 

And when he did not understand this, she had asked 
him plainly if there was no place in his own land that 
belonged to the Little Good People. 

Jock admitted that he had been frightened when 
he spent his first night in the glen. The gypsies had 
brought him to the edge of the moor and he had hidden 
in the heather till dusk for fear Robin or some of his 
old companions might catch a glimpse of him. The 
stars were shining when he crept cautiously into the 
fairies’ land with his heart in his mouth. No harm 
had come to him, though, and the next day he had 
found the cave. 

“I call it my castle,” he explained, “and it’s rare 
good fun. Crippled Dick and myself have often played 
that we lived in one, and I’m hoping he may see mine 
yet.” 


132 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

The thought of one playmate brought others to 
mind and he was soon telling with delight of the 
pranks he had played, particularly of the frightening 
of the three lads on their moonlight visit. 

“It’s a real pity you could not have heard Robin 
Mucklewraith and Jamie Ferguson and Davy Davit 
screeling and calling, The Bogie! The Bogie! And 
me with whin branches over my ears and boots on my 
hands,” he told the harper. 

He laughed too, at the steward and his cautions, 
though how he had gotten word of Jock’s whereabouts, 
or why he would risk himself night after night for 
anybody’s sake was beyond all understanding. But 
come he did and Jock had great fun guessing what 
would be in the little pans and pots and bundles that 
he brought. 

But when the harper suggested that the Laird might 
be behind the kindness and urged Jock to go home, the 
boy drew back in alarm. 

“You’ll not be telling the Laird about my castle, 
will you?” he pleaded. “Nor the minister nor the 
Baillie?” 

Poor Gibbie Greycloak was sorely puzzled as to 
what to do or say. That the Laird or the minister 
should hear what he had heard that night he was sure. 
What if the child were sick or harmed in this lonely 


JOCK BAREFOOT 133 

spot? Still Jock had taken him in and had trusted 
him. 

“I will not tell them,” he promised at last, but never 
did a promise lay so heavy on his heart. 

Long after the storm had passed and he had gotten 
to his lodging in the town he was awake with the bur¬ 
den of it. And, though the children crowded to meet 
him next morning, he had no stories to tell nor songs 
to sing. Kirsty found him sitting under a tree with his 
head in his hands, and she ran to ask what the matter 
was. 

“Are you sick, Gibbie Greycloak?” she inquired 
anxiously, “and if you are my mother will brew you 
a remedy. She knows all about sickness.” 

“It is not sickness of body,” groaned Gibbie, “but 
heart-sickness, which is worse.” 

“Then you must tell my father, the minister,” cried 
Kirsty. “He’s grand for ails like that.” 

“No, no,” groaned the harper. “I cannot tell him. 
I have passed my word.” 

“But you might maybe tell me,” said Kirsty, who 
was beginning to understand that the harper’s trouble 
was out of ordinary. “I’m naught but a bit of a lassie, 
but I can hold my tongue as well as anybody, my 
mother says.” 

Eager as the harper was to share his secret he had 


134 JOCK BAREFOOT 

to consider the matter before he spoke. At last he said 
solemnly, “I have not broken my word and I will not. 
I must not tell the minister nor the Laird nor the Bail- 
lie, but I’m thinking he would not mind my telling 
you, Kirsty.” 

“He would not! He would not!” cried Kirsty 
clapping her hands joyfully, “but I’ve guessed it. You 
have seen Jock Barefoot and you know where his hidey- 
hole is.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


Kirsty was soon comforting the harper with all 
the assurances she could think of. He need not be 
troubled about Jock Barefoot. Her father, the minis¬ 
ter, said he was best let alone for a while. And the 
Laird was just biding his time to bring the laddie home. 
They did not know of the Castle, and Kirsty would not 
tell them, but they could find him, never fear. 

All while she was talking, though, or listening to 
the harper’s story she was making plans to go herself 
to the Glen of the Fairies. Jock would never come back 
till he was fetched. He was too fond of his castle and 
all, and there was no one who could coax him as well 
as Kirsty. She was sure of that. 

Just how or when she could get away, or what she 
would do when she came to the Glen, were questions 
that could be settled later. Crippled Dick would help 
her plan. He always thought of grand ways to do 
everything. As soon as she could leave the harper she 
started for his house. Oh, oh, oh, how pleased he would 
be! 


135 


136 JOCK BAREFOOT 

She had not gone far when she saw a crowd of chil¬ 
dren and older people hurrying ahead of her as if some¬ 
thing were the matter. A house might be on fire or 
maybe a letter had come. Everybody liked to hear 
what was in a letter, or somebody might be hurt. She 
began to run but she was too far behind the others to 
catch up with them. Luckily Robin Mucklewraith, 
who was late as well as herself, came up with her, trav¬ 
eling like a horse on his long legs. 

“What’s all the stir?” cried Kirsty, reaching out a 
hand to grasp his jacket as he passed. 

“That’s what I’m going to see,” said Robin, jerk¬ 
ing away from her. But he did have the grace to call 
back, “It’s down at Crippled Dick’s house.” 

All sorts of fears came into Kirsty’s head as she 
bounded along. She was almost at Robin’s heels when 
he reached the crowd that had gathered at the crippled 
boy’s door. They were laughing and talking so gaily 
that Kirsty knew that nothing had gone wrong with 
Dick. But it was some time before she could edge 
herself close enough to see that the cause of the excite¬ 
ment was a great box that stood in the dooryard. 

Effie, the sexton’s daughter, was the nearest at hand, 
and, when she could get her attention, Kirsty learned 
that the box had been brought by Sandy MacNeil the 


JOCK BAREFOOT 137 

carrier who went between the large and small towns 
with his horse and wagon. 

“If ye’ll put your head under my arm, Kirsty,” 
whispered Effie, “Ye can read Dick’s name on it as 
large as a house.” 

Kirsty lost no time in carrying out these instruc¬ 
tions, and there sure enough the writing stood out so 
black and plain that the smallest scholar in the village 
dame-school could have read it. 

“FOR CRIPPLED DICK,” and then in smaller 
print, “To be delivered at Wraye by carrier.” 

Everybody was guessing what the box held. A 
child who longed to own such a toy felt certain that it 
was a hobby-horse big enough for a laddie to ride, and 
a woman thought it was likely to be a cart. 

“His mother has often wished for one so that he 
could get about easier,” she said. 

“It’s red,” cried Robin, who had managed to get 
near enough to the box to peep through the cracks. 
“Red like a soldier’s coat.” 

“I see rockers,” put in Jamie Ferguson, who as 
usual was at Robin’s elbow. 

Rockers! Then maybe a hobby-horse after all or 
a cradle, though what Dick would do with the one or 
the other nobody could think. 

“I will not have a cradle,” Dick called from the 


138 JOCK BAREFOOT 

doorway where he stood on his crutches to watch the 
stir. His eyes filled with tears at the thought, but the 
carpenter who had been sent for to open the box came 
hurrying up with his hammer and chisel and ended the 



A thing never seen before in the town of 

W raye. 


suspense. Split went the boards and out came a chair 
with red velvet cushions, and velvet-covered arms, and 
rockers—a thing never seen before in the town of 
Wraye. 

What was more there was no need for rockers on 
a chair. They were dangerous. A chair was not meant 













JOCK BAREFOOT 139 

to cavort like a horse but to stand steady on four good 
legs. 

“He’ll be tipping himself over and breaking his 
neck,” said Mrs. Davit. “I’m warning you now.” 

It was a good thing for Dick that his mother had 
something of his own adventurous spirit. 

“We’ll have to be cautious,” she admitted, “but 
he’ll like it all the better for that. He’s always wanted 
something a bit dangerous.” 

Dick, who was already seated in the chair, called 
out that it was as easy as a coach. 

“I’ll call it that I’m thinking,” he told his playfel¬ 
lows, “and when your mothers and all gang home you 
can have a try in it.” 

The mothers and all were in no great hurry to 
leave, not until they found out who could have sent 
such a gift. And the children were wondering, too. 

“I do not believe the fairies had aught to do with it,” 
cried Robin Mucklewraith, just as if someone had sug¬ 
gested such a thing. 

“Whisht,” said his mother, “or you’ll be getting 
your nose blacked again.” But the children, who were 
as curious as anybody, looked disappointed. There 
was nothing strange to them in fairies sending rock¬ 
ing-chairs or anything else. And if not the Little Good 
People, who then? 


140 JOCK BAREFOOT 

Dick had an uncle here and an aunt there and 
cousins enough for a regiment, but as each of them 
was mentioned his mother was sure to say, “He’d have 
sent it gladly but where would he be getting the 
money?” Or maybe, “We have not heard from him 
since Dick was a wean.” 

“Perhaps the carrier knows more than he told,” 
suggested Mistress Margot. “Run to the inn, Robin, 
for he is there for his dinner, and ask him. Your legs 
are younger than mine.” 

Robin was off like a shot and back again, but he 
brought little more information than they already had. 
A stranger had put the box in the carrier’s cart at Next 
Town with all charges paid. And Sandy MacNiel had 
asked no questions. 

“He says if he went about peering into other folks’ 
business he would lose his own,” Robin reported. This 
was undoubtedly true, but not helpful in solving the 
mystery of the chair. 

“There’s nobody left to send it but the king,” said 
a jolly fellow, who was always ready to start a laugh. 

“Yes, there is,” said Kirsty, who had stood by with¬ 
out a word, which does not mean that she had not been 
thinking. “You haven’t guessed the Laird yet.” 

Every eye turned to her then and Robin asked 


JOCK BAREFOOT 141 

promptly, “Did he tell you, Kirsty? The two of you 
are so thick.” 

“No, he did not tell me,” said Kirsty. “But he knew 
from me that Dick wanted a chair with cushions and 
it’s like him to send it.” 

Well, yes, everybody agreed to that. What with 
Jock Barefoot and the Little Good People and all, the 
Laird was daft enough to spend his money for any¬ 
thing, even a chair with rockers. 

“Not a day goes by without the steward coming for 
sugar plums,” sighed Mistress Margot. “I often think 
to take it up with the minister.” 

“There’s naught wrong with the Laird,” cried 
Kirsty, “and my father knows all about the sugar 
plums.” The crowd laughed good humoredly. They’d 
soon find out from the steward whether they were on 
the right trail or not. If he said the Laird had not sent 
the chair they’d believe him, but if he put them off by 
saying “Ask him,” they would know as well as if he 
had told them that the Laird was the one. Andrew 
MacAndrew thought himself as cunning as an old 
fox, but he could not fool them. 

“Come away,” proposed Mrs. Mucklewraith, “let’s 
be leaving the weans to their fun for they are getting 
restless-like.” 


142 


JOCK BAREFOOT 

The chair being a novelty not every child was will¬ 
ing to try it at first, but after Kirsty and Effie had taken 
a seat and pronounced both the cushions and the rock¬ 
ers grand, most of the others overcame their shyness. 
Dick was besieged then by would-be riders, for his 
idea of calling the chair a coach had taken hold of 
their fancy. 

Every request was worded in the same way, “Leave 
me be the next to ride.” 

Dick managed the traffic with authority. 

“The wee ones first,” he directed, “then the lassies, 
and then any lad that wants to try.” 

Robin Mucklewraith would not take a turn. 

“I’ll not sit,” he said, “but I’ll stand by, else some 
of these wild ones will be breaking the rockers.” And 
thereafter if anyone dared go beyond a steady motion 
Robin called out sternly, “If you tip over you’ll not 
ride again.” 

All of this lasted so long that Kirsty had to go home 
without telling Dick any of her plans. And if she had 
not had the chair to talk about, her mother and father 
might have wondered why she was so lively and rest¬ 
less that night. As it was they thought her pleasure in 
Dick’s happiness accounted for her dancing feet and 
laughter, and they agreed with her that the Laird was 
responsible for the gift. Kirsty was full of that. 


JOCK BAREFOOT 143 

“You should have seen them all when I tellit about 
him,” she said, “though it fretted me to hear them call¬ 
ing him daft.” 

The minister’s wife was of the opinion that it was 
a good thing that Jock Barefoot had run away if it 
had taught the Laird to be kind and friendly. 

“He hadn’t a word for our Kirsty when he first 
came puffing and blowing about the laddie. And now 
you’d think she was the queen’s self,” she said as proof 
of the changes that had taken place in him. 

The minister agreed that the Laird had grown 
friendlier, though he had never been unkind in spite 
of his hasty temper. Did he not keep the same servants 
for years? And look at Andrew Mac Andrew. Money 
could not get him from the Laird. 

“Well, have it your own way,” retorted his wife, 
“but you need not tell me that the Laird would have 
given anybody a velvet chair before Jock Barefoot 
went.” 

“I wish Jock could see the chair,” said Kirsty 
softly. “Don’t you, Father?” 

That the minister wished this very thing with all his 
heart was plain to see from his anxious face. 

“I had thought he would be done with his play in 
a day or two,” he said a little sadly. “And I was maybe 
wrong in advising the Laird to leave him alone. But 


144 JOCK BAREFOOT 

my mind is made up. If he does not come soon I shall 
go to the Glen myself.” 

“You cannot do that,” interrupted his wife, “unless 
you want everybody telling that the minister believes in 
all the idle tales.” 

What people said was not likely to keep the minister 
from doing what he thought was right, but he looked 
so grave at her mother’s words that if Kirsty had not 
put her hand over her lips the secret might have slipped 
out in spite of all her caution. It glowed in her cheeks 
though, and made her eyes so bright that her father 
called her his little “candlelass” when she kissed him 
good night. 

Well, he would not be sad over Jock Barefoot long. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Robin Mucklewraith was off on some of his proj¬ 
ects next morning, and, as usual, most of the children 
had followed him. Not one of them was at Crippled 
Dick’s to interrupt the telling of the secret when Kirsty 
got there bright and early. She had had the mind to 
make Dick guess a while before she let it out, but the 
whole thing slipped from her tongue as soon as she 
spied him sitting in his chair at the doorway. 

“Jock Barefoot’s found. He lives in a cave that 
he calls his castle. Gibbie Greycloak has talked with 
him and I’m going to bring him home.” 

The suddenness of the news fairly took Dick’s 
breath. 

“A cave, say you?” he gasped. “A cave?” 

“Yes, a cave,” said Kirsty who was as excited as he 
was. “In the Glen of the Fairies and—” 

“Has he—has he—” interrupted Dick in a solemn 
whisper. “Has he seen the Little Good People, or did 
you think to ask?” 

Well, Kirsty had not asked, that is, not exactly. 


145 


146 jock barefoot 

“All I said was that I wished I knew,” she explained, 
“but Jock had not tellit Gibbie.” 

“He’ll tell us, though,” cried Dick who was carried 
away with the wonder of it all. 



“Jock Barefoot’s found.” 


Kirsty had to repeat the harper’s every word, and 
then Dick had questions in plenty to ask. 

Was it Jock who had brought the flute, and had he 
made it himself or gotten it from the gypsies? Did he 
go to the Dingle to see them, and did he have the 
thought to slip away again when they went? Had he 
worn the boots? 

Kirsty answered everything as best she could, and 







JOCK BAREFOOT 147 

when there was no more to tell Dick gave a great sigh. 

“If I could take my chair with me,” he said, “there’s 
no place I’d rather live than a cave.” 

“I wouldn’t mind it myself for a while,” agreed 
the little girl, “but Jock must come away now. My 
father is grieving over him, and, besides, he will for¬ 
get all he knows running wild like the hares about the 
moorland.” 

She and Dick would have to put their heads to¬ 
gether, for Jock would be a hard one to coax. 

“I’m depending on you, Dick,” said Kirsty, “to 
think of a way.” 

Nothing suited the crippled boy more than this, but 
first he must sit by Kirsty on the doorstep. 

“I’m not used to thinking in my chair yet,” he told 
her, as she handed him his crutches. “The cushions are 
too soft.” 

That Jock might be tolled home to see the chair 
was Dick’s first suggestion. 

“You must tell him that he cannot hope to keek at 
it in the night, Kirsty,” he advised. 

Another important inducement might be that Jock 
could get no book-learning if he stayed in the glen or 
wandered about with gypsies. And Jock was always 
one for books. 

Then there was no one to keep Robin Muckle- 


148 JOCK BAREFOOT 

wraith and his bragging within bounds since Jock was 
away. 

“He’ll not be liking that I’m thinking,” said Dick. 

And he’d maybe want to see the hole that Davy 
Davit’s ball had made by accident in the Baillie’s win¬ 
dow, though he might have been there already. The 
Baillie had gone by in a great fret that morning, talk¬ 
ing of birds and worse that troubled folk. 

After all the great thing was to see Jock and the 
sooner the better. Why not that very day? Kirsty 
could slip away from the garden where she spent hours 
undisturbed, or she could ask boldly if she might go 
out to play; nobody would dream that she did not 
mean with some of the village children. 

“You would not take Effie with you, would you?” 
Dick asked a little anxiously. 

“Effie?” cried Kirsty. “You could not get her to 
the Glen for all you could offer her. She believes in 
fairies. And I’m not afraid.” 

“I’m frighted for you,” said Dick. “I would not 
have pleasure in my chair nor anything else if harm 
came to you, Kirsty.” 

He was so much in earnest that Kirsty, who had 
started away, sat down on the door-step again to con¬ 
sider who might keep her company. But the more 
they talked the more she was convinced that she would 


JOCK BAREFOOT 149 

have to go alone. The lassies were too timid and the 
boys too forward. 

“They would outstrip me to the Glen and spoil 
everything,” she said. 

Shep, the Laird’s dog, would have done well for a 
protector if he could have been found. Often he was 
in the streets with the steward, but today there was no 
sign of him. More than likely he was on some far hill¬ 
side with the shepherds and their black-faced sheep. 

“I dare not wait for him,” said Kirsty, “and there’s 
no one else—yes, yes, there is. I’ve just thought. I’ll 
send the gypsy queen’s broken coin, that I have in my 
pocket, this very minute to Beta. She’ll not be as 
frighted as I will.” 

Dick’s mother was off gossiping with a neighbor, 
which was a very good thing, for, in their delight, the 
children forgot all caution. 

“I’ve been wearying to try the token ever since I 
had it,” cried Kirsty, “but I could not find a reason.” 

She took the broken coin out of her pocket, and 
the two children examined it with fresh curiosity. 
How fortunate it was that she kept it by her all the 
time, and how glad she was that her father did not 
think it was a heathenish charm as her mother did. It 
was naught but a friendly gift he had said, and there 
could be no harm in friendliness. 


150 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“But how will you get it to Beta?” asked Dick. 
“Do you know that, Kirsty?” 

Kirsty did not know but she was hopeful. Gypsy 
women might come to the village with their laces and 
beads, or a gypsy man to mend pans and pots. Her 
mother had one in the house right then waiting for a 
tinker. And gypsies often bought at Mistress Margot’s 
shop. 

She ran to take a look there, but she might as well 
have saved herself the trouble. 

“Mistress Margot thinks they’ve all flitted,” she 
said when she came back, “but it’s no matter. I tellit 
you I could go by myself and I can.” 

She was already turning away when she caught 
a glimpse of a man just entering the village street. He 
was a gypsy, she was sure. As the sunlight flashed on 
the gay reds and yellows and blues of his turban and 
coat and sash, she realized with joy that he was Beta’s 
father. 

“The queen’s son! The queen’s son!” she shouted, 
and before Dick recovered enough from his astonish¬ 
ment to speak she was out of hearing. 

The gypsy was astonished, in his turn, when a mo¬ 
ment later Kirsty reached him and thrust the token in 
his hand. She explained breathlessly, “Your mother 
bade me send it, and I’m needing Beta.” 


JOCK BAREFOOT 151 

His face lighted up with a smile when he saw who 
she was, and he was ready enough to act as her mes¬ 
senger. 

“Where shall the gypsy lass meet the little lady?” 
he inquired respectfully. “And when? At morning 
or noonday or when the stars are bright?” 

Kirsty wished that Dick were there to help her de¬ 
cide. The garden at the Manse was too near for a 
meeting place. The Mucklestane, which she thought 
of next, seemed too far, but there was a sycamore tree, 
where the crows liked to build, at the moor’s edge. 
Anyone could find that for there was always a nest 
or two hanging dark and ragged in the branches. The 
crow’s tree, then, between dinner and tea—if gypsies 
had tea. She did not like to ask, but to her relief the 
gypsy understood. After the noon hour Beta would 
wait at the trysting tree. 

“Romanies keep their word,” he assured her 
proudly. 

“And so do I,” said Kirsty. “My father, the min¬ 
ister, has taught me.” 

There was no time to lose after this. As soon as 
she had called to tell Dick that all was right she hur¬ 
ried home. Only one small question had to be settled 
now, but that very question kept her from being as 
happy as she had expected to be. She could eat her 



152 JOCK BAREFOOT 

dinner and go into the garden, or she could eat her 
dinner and ask to go and play, but suddenly neither 
way was to her liking. 

“It’s just plain deceiving no matter which I do,” 
she said aloud, “and deceiving is wicked.” 

Neither Dick nor Beta could help her about this. 
She must find a better plan for herself, though what 
that could be with the harper’s promise to Jock bind¬ 
ing her as well? Not that Kirsty was one to give up. 
The next instant she was in the kitchen inquiring of 
her mother, “When you were a lassie did you tell 
granny everything?” 

“I did not,” said the minister’s wife, who was pour¬ 
ing the dinner’s pudding into the baking pan. “She 
had no time for foolish questions and no more have 
I. And do not fash your father for he’s sermon-mak¬ 
ing.” She was hasty but not cross, for she called after 
the little girl that the pudding pan would soon be 
ready for scraping. 

Sweet batter could not lighten Kirsty’s heart just 
then, nor was it a whit lighter when she passed the 
study door and her father called. 

“Is that my little Trusty-True?” 

Often she went in to sit by him and listen to him 
read from the Bible, it might be about a wandering 
sheep or it might be about the laddie whose father was 


JOCK BAREFOOT 153 

so glad to get him home, just as everybody would be 
glad when Jock Barefoot came back. She thought of 
this today as she stood hesitating in the doorway 
of the study. All at once it came to her what she could 
do with her burdensome secret. 

Only a little while later the minister looked up to 
find her at his elbow with a glowing face. 

“Father, Father,” she cried. “I’ve a parable for 
you but it is not in the Bible.” And without waiting 
for comment she began. 

“There was once a king’s daughter who had to 
go into a far country; at least if it were not far it was 
where she had never thought to go. And she could 
not tell her mother or father where she was going 
nor what she was going to do.” 

“Why?” asked the minister, as she paused to take 
breath. 

“Because she had promised not to, but it was noth¬ 
ing wrong. If she did what she wanted to do she would 
bring home something more precious than—than— 
than fine gold or rubies and there would be great re¬ 
joicing.” 

“Was there no one who could go with her?” asked 
the minister, puckering his brow as he always did 
when he was puzzling over his sermons or matters as 


serious. 


154 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“There was,” answered Kirsty promptly. “An¬ 
other princess!” But at the thought of herself and 
Beta as royalty, she lost her own solemnity and 



“Oh, Father, I love you, 1 love you’’ 


laughed so gaily that there was nothing for the min¬ 
ister to do but laugh with her, though he did not know 
the cause. 

Presently they grew grave again and Kirsty took 
up her story. 


































JOCK BAREFOOT 155 

“The king’s daughter went to her father to ask 
for his blessing and—” 

“He gave it to her,” interrupted the minister lay¬ 
ing a hand gently on the little girl’s head. All the 
world was happiness for Kirsty then. 

“Oh, Father, I love you, I love you,” she cried so 
joyfully that her mother came hurrying in to find 
out what the matter was. That the minister was pleased 
to be loved and praised in the midst of all his thinking 
seemed a very strange thing to her. 

“I’ll never understand the two of you,” she said. 


CHAPTER XV 


Of all the days in the year the little girl’s mother 
had selected this one for a dozen pieces of work in 
which the child could be of use. Kirsty must gather 
a handful of rose petals to scatter in the linens when 
they were packed away after bleaching. Kirsty must 
run to Mistress Margot’s for a bit of wax for the 
smoothing iron. Kirsty must dust her father’s books 
before he sat down to study again. She might have 
been late at the trysting place if the minister had not 
called her just then. 

“The dusting can bide a wee for I’ve an errand 
for the lassie myself.” When his wife inquired what 
that might be he answered to her great surprise and 
Kirsty’s as well, “To get me a bunch of white heather.” 

“White heather!” exclaimed his wife, “And what 
would you want with white heather unless you’ve 
gone queer and believe in luck.” 

“There is no luck in white heather but there’s 
beauty,” said the minister. “I’ve seen it shining on 


JOCK BAREFOOT 157 

the moor like snow in the sun.” But this did not ap¬ 
pease her. 

“Would you be sending a child to the moor,” she 
cried, “to fall into peat holes, or maybe to be frighted 
to death with loneliness? I wonder at you!” Kirsty 
was wondering, too, but her father only smiled. 

“The beekeepers are on the moor with their skeps,” 
he said, “and she can find a playmate to go along, can 
you not, Kirsty?” 

The little girl nodded rapturously. Was there ever 
a father so kind and wise as hers! After she had started 
on her way, though, her heart hurt a little because 
her mother was left out of her confidence, and she 
ran back to kiss her and say, “I love you, too.” 

“And why should you not love me?” asked her 
mother, more perplexed than re-assured by this burst 
of affection. She stood at the window watching anx¬ 
iously till the child was far down the road. The min¬ 
ister called in his kindly way, “You need not worry 
about our Kirsty. She’ll not give you cause.” 

With such quick feet as hers Kirsty was soon in 
sight of the moor, where, just as her father had thought, 
the beekeepers had set up their straw-covered hives or 
skeps as they were called. Even before she got there 
she could hear the humming of hundreds of bees in 
the heather. There was no honey like heather-honey, 


158 JOCK BAREFOOT 

everybody knew that, and no place like the moor for 
heather bloom. As far as she could see it was covered 
with purple. 

To find white heather there would be no easy task, 
she thought, but never mind that. She would look 
for nothing till Beta came. She was feeling a little 
disappointed that the gypsy child was not already 
there when she spied her, standing behind the syca¬ 
more as still as the monument in the village square. 

“I thought it would have to do with the lost lad¬ 
die,” she said, when Kirsty explained why she had 
sent for her, “and so did my granny. She has been 
troubling herself for fear he would flit before you 
found him, and we dare not go near him nor bid him 
come to us because of the Laird.” 

“Oh, we’ll bring him home,” said Kirsty confi¬ 
dently. “I’ll not come without him. And I’ve another 
errand. I must pick my father a bunch of white 
heather, though I’m thinking he only wanted it to get 
me away.” 

Two pairs of eyes searched the moor on every side 
and more than once were deceived. 

“I see it! I see it!” called Kirsty, but no, a cloud 
of white butterflies rose before her. And again it 
was the down of cotton grass that the wind had scat¬ 
tered. Then, just beyond a little rise of ground, Beta’s 


JOCK BAREFOOT 159 

brown finger pointed it out, a whole patch of white¬ 
ness. 

“Just like a wee garden,” cried Kirsty, running 
to gather her hands full. Now if she could only find 
Jock Barefoot as well she would have nothing else 
to wish for, she thought. 

There was no loneliness on the moor, even when 
the beekeepers were out of sight. A goldfinch passed 
singing ts-sweet, ts-sweet on his way to get thistle seed. 
A curlew made a great ado about her nest, which, late 
as it was in summer, she had hidden in the bracken. 
There went a corncrake calling “Craik! Craik!” And 
here came a buzzing bee as close to them as if he were 
mistaking the little girls for heather bloom. 

“Bless you, bless you, burnie bee,” called Kirsty. 

Tell when my wedding be. 

If it is to-morrow day, 

Spread your wings and fly away. 

Off he flew and here came another. Kirsty must 
repeat the old rhyme, asking for Beta this time, 

Tell when will her wedding be. 

Next, roused by their chatter and laughter, an Al¬ 
pine hare rose on his haunches to look gravely at the 
children. He still wore his summer coat of brown but 


i6o JOCK BAREFOOT 

streaks of white showed on his breast, and Kirsty 
nodded her head wisely. It was high time for Jock 
Barefoot to come home when the hares began to 
change their color. Before anybody dreamed of it 
winter would be here. 

“Let’s run,” she said and catching hands she and 
Beta scurried through the grasses and flowers as if 
they, themselves, were little wild creatures. 

At the opening of the Glen of the Fairies they had 
a surprise, for, as they stopped to peep ahead before 
venturing farther, a great dog bounded to meet them, 
wagging his tail as if to welcome them. Then he hur¬ 
ried away. 

“Shep,” cried Kirsty. “He’s been to see Jock, 
maybe, and it’s likely he’s known all the while where 
he was hidden.” 

She was so taken up with the thought of this that 
they were well into the Glen before she remembered 
a caution that Crippled Dick had given her as a part¬ 
ing word. 

“You’d best put fern seed in your shoes, Kirsty. 
It might please the Little People.” 

Kirsty had no idea of doing such a thing. 

“My father, the minister, would not like me to,” she 
told Beta, “but your granny might not care.” Beta, 
however, had about her neck on a string a curious 


JOCK BAREFOOT 161 

stone that protected her, or so she believed, from dan¬ 
gers of every kind. 

Kirsty had not dared inquire too particularly into 
Jock’s whereabouts for fear the harper would guess 
her purpose, but from his talk she had learned that the 
cave was near a wimple of water where the laddie 
washed his pots and pans and clothes, and not far 
from a ravine called Redcleugh because of the color 
of its banks. Gibbie had spoken, too, of a tree twisted 
by the wind which had the look, at a distance, of an 
old woman. 

Yes, there it was, and just beyond it a little water¬ 
fall bright in the sunshine. And there was the cleugh. 

For a moment the children stood close together un¬ 
certain what to do next, then Kirsty called softly, 
“Jocky, are you there?” 

Almost immediately an answer came, “If it’s your¬ 
self, Kirsty.” 

“It is, it is, and Beta too,” cried Kirsty, trying to 
be calm and not succeeding. “We’ve come to see you 
and I’ve a giftie for you.” 

The gift was an apple which she had concealed in 
her pocket with no little difficulty. She was struggling 
to get it out when the bushes opened and there was 
Jock, a little taller than he had been when he left 


162 JOCK BAREFOOT 

home, but not a whit the worse for all his adventures. 
Kirsty looked him over and said accusingly, 

“You’ve been crying.” 

“I have not,” said Jock, “or if I have I’ve stopit.” 
But Kirsty was not satisfied. 

“Where are you hurt?” she asked in her mother’s 
own tones, for she was not all her father’s daughter. 
“I might maybe bind it for you.” 

“I’m not hurted,” said Jock, drawing the back of 
his hand across his eyes to wipe away the telltale tears. 
“I was just wishing that Shep was my own doggie 
and could live in my castle with me and never have 
to leave me. Whiles I have to drive him off for fear 
he’ll bring the enemy on me.” 

“Who are you talking about?” asked Kirsty 
promptly. 

“Oh, just maybe Robin or Jamie or anybody that 
comes hunting me out,” said Jock. Seeing that Kirsty 
was a little downcast by this he added hastily, “I’m 
not meaning you.” 

“Well then,” said Kirsty, “I’ve a thought. We 
might play that Beta and myself have slipit in to save 
you from starving. I’ve an apple for you. My father 
brought it to me from Next Town but he’ll not mind 
if I give it to you.” 

“And since you are friends,” cried Jock, who was 



The bushes opened and there was Jock. 







164 JOCK BAREFOOT 

more elated with having playfellows than with the 
apple, “I’ll let you into my castle. But you must shut 
your eyes and let me lead you.” 

The journey was a short one but full of excitement. 
What with coming up against trees and stumbling over 
stones and ducking their heads at Jock’s warning cries, 
the visitors were fairly out of breath when he an¬ 
nounced at last, “It’s all right. You can look.” 

The harper had given Kirsty a fairly good de¬ 
scription of the cave, but she went about delightedly, 
poking at the bed to see if the heather were spread 
thickly enough, and feeling the clothes to find out if 
they were damp from hanging on the rocks. 

“It’s grand,” she sighed at last, “and I’ll not blame 
you for hating to leave it.” 

“I’ll not leave it,” cried Jock taking alarm at once. 
“There’s no use asking me.” 

“But what will you do when winter comes and the 
glen’s locked with snow? Andrew Mac Andrew can¬ 
not get through with your supper then.” 

“I’m saving for that,” said Jock, “A bannock a 
night and I’m gathering for a fire.” 

Beta who had been a quiet listener to all that had 
passed put in a word now, “My granny bade me tell 
you that she sees good fortune for you, but it is in a 
great house and not the Glen.” 


JOCK BAREFOOT 165 

“The minister does not believe in fortunes and I 
will not,” Jock declared stoutly. 

Not even the news of Dick’s fine chair made any 
impression on him. 

“I’ll likely get a keek at it,” he told Kirsty, just as 
Dick had thought he would. And when she insisted 
that the only way to see the chair was to come like 
other folk in the broad daylight he did not seem dis¬ 
couraged. 

Dick had been right about the Baillie’s window, 
too. Jock Barefoot had not only called there like a 
rook and a crow and a curlew till the Baillie came 
running with his nightcap awry, but had hung a fish 
in the hole as well. 

“I had meant it for Granny Blair,” he chuckled, 
“but I’ll get her another.” 

“But how can you learn if you live to yourself,” 
persisted Kirsty. “You’ve already forgotten all that 
you knew I’m thinking.” 

“I have not,” said Jock, and taking a stick he 
printed in bold letters on the smooth floor of the cave, 
JOCK THE BAREFOOT. 

Kirsty was a little taken back by the grand look 
of it, but not for long. In no time at all she had 
printed beneath his name in letters just as bold, 
KIRSTY THE MINISTER’S LASS. 


166 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Now it is your turn,” she said handing the stick 
to Beta, but the gypsy child had roved about too much 
for learning. 

“I’ll make my mark,” she told them, and she drew 
on the earth a sign that seemed very mysterious to the 
other children. It was really nothing but a ring with 
a dot in it, and stood for nothing more than Beta the 
Gypsy. 

“I’ll put leaves over them so they’ll not be tram¬ 
pled out,” said Jock, looking at the names and sign 
with pride. “Then when you’ve gone I’ll have them 
for company.” 

At this Kirsty gathered up her heather to leave, 
though she still had an argument untried. 

“Well,” she said as she turned away, “I’m think¬ 
ing Robin Mucklewraith is right.” 

“What about?” asked Jock, which was just what 
she had hoped he would do. 

“Oh, about marble-playing,” she answered as care¬ 
lessly as if it were nothing after all to tell. “And run¬ 
ning and other things, too. He goes about bragging 
that there’s no one can beat him.” She was already 
out of the cave when Jock called after her. 

“Do you think the Laird is angry yet?” And 
Kirsty was severe in her reply. 

“If he is why should he be sending you sweets and 


JOCK BAREFOOT 167 

pudding and togs. It’s you haven’t forgiven him and 
it’s wicked not to forgive. My father says so.” 

“I’ve naught against him,” said Jock, hanging his 
head. 

“Then you must go and tell him,” said Kirsty, “or 
what good would it be to him.” 

Jock cast a glance around as if he were looking 
for a way to escape, but if he had this in mind he soon 
gave it up. 

“I do not know what to say,” he faltered, “but I’ll 
go if you’ll go with me.” 

“That’s just what I came for,” said Kirsty, “but 
first you must put on your fine clothes, boots and all.” 


CHAPTER XVI 

The clothes fitted surprisingly well except maybe 
that the boots swallowed up too much of his legs. 
Though Jock was a bit bashful and awkward in such 
finery he was very proud of it. The little girls could 
see that. They, themselves, were open in their admira¬ 
tion, and Kirsty borrowed her mother’s terms to assure 
him that he was “real bonny.” 

The rest of his little possessions were left in the 
cave. 

“I’ll be coming back off and on I’m thinking,” 
said Jock casting a regretful look at his precious 
castle. “And there’s naught in the glen to harm the 
bit things, just blackbirds and hares and maybe badg¬ 
ers.” 

His eyes met an inquiring glance from Kirsty 
right here and fell before it, for he knew very well 
what she wanted to ask. He knew, too, that there was 
no getting round an answer. Having once made up 
his mind he blurted out, “I do not believe there are 
any fairies at all.” 


168 


JOCK BAREFOOT 169 

Even when the Laird threatened to drive the gyp¬ 
sies from the Dingle, Kirsty had felt no sadder than 
she did when she heard this. 

“Why do you say such a thing?” she demanded for 
all the world as if she, the minister’s daughter, had 
to defend the Little People. 

“Because,” said Jock, falling back on the ex¬ 
planation that he and all the other children gave for 
so many unaccountable things, “because they are just 
play.” 

He looked a little abashed as he spoke, but noth¬ 
ing he could have said would have pleased Kirsty more. 
Why of course, the fairies were play, just like Dick’s 
horses and Jock’s castle and the harper’s stories. And 
it was no harm to think and talk of them when you 
knew that. 

“Oh, Jock,” she cried, “let’s pretend that they will 
take care of your castle while you are gone.” 

The whole glen was filled with the glamour of 
make-believe then. The names left on the floor of the 
cave were messages to the Little People, the stick that 
Jock laid before the entrance was a great iron door 
studded with nails, the mullein stalk that grew close 
by was an elfin warder. 

And there was Jock Barefoot ready to lead them 
into more adventures. 


170 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“We’d best go by my brig,” he told them, “and then 
nobody will see us.” 

The brig or bridge was a slippery log that lay 
across the ravine with the water of a little stream rush¬ 
ing beneath it. It was none too easy a way. Jock went 
ahead but first he took off his boots. 

“I’ll put them on when we come to the Laird’s 
house if you say so, Kirsty,” he promised, “but I’ll not 
be risking myself in boots on a brig.” 

Kirsty came next, as light-footed as the Little Good 
People might have been, and Beta followed without 
a thought of danger. 

“I call it the Brig o’ Peril,” said Jock, “but I would 
not tell you till you crossed.” 

Next they must scramble up what Jock had named 
the Wee Stair. The steps were a few roots and stones 
that gave a foothold, and then, by the aid of a vine, 
they pulled themselves up to the road that led to the 
Laird’s house. 

As they stood there, tired but well pleased with 
their efforts, Beta took the broken coin out of her waist- 
bag and gave it to Kirsty. 

“All’s done,” she said solemnly, “and we must 
part.” 

“Part,” cried Kirsty, “but we must not part till 
we have been to the Laird’s. Do you not want to hear 


JOCK BAREFOOT 171 

what he and Andrew MacAndrew say when they see 
Jock Barefoot? There will be a grand stir.” 

The gypsy child was not to be persuaded. Her 
people were all packed and ready to leave the dingle. 
They were only waiting till Beta had kept faith with 
Kirsty to start. And where they were going who could 
tell? Beta made a wide sweep with her hands as if to 
take in the whole world as she said, “Romanies must go 
their way and giorgios theirs.” 

Giorgios was the name given to all outsiders by 
Beta’s people, but it sounded very important to Kirsty 
when applied to herself and Jock. She wished that 
Crippled Dick and Robin Mucklewraith might have 
been there to hear. And she was thrilled even more 
when Beta cried out, “We must part but we will not 
forget one another. I have a precaution against that.” 
Without any further explanation she began to walk 
around and around her friend chanting a doggerel 
rhyme. 

Briar, bramble, dill, rose, 

One stays, one goes, 

W indie, wind, bindle bind, 

Bind heart, bind hand 

Bind them with a willow strand, 

Withy, dithy, domine. 

So let this be. 


172 JOCK BAREFOOT 

“Now stay or flit we are friends forever,” she told 
Kirsty when the chant came to an end, and without 
another word, or even a backward glance, she hurried 
away. 

Kirsty was almost in tears as she watched her dis¬ 
appearing among the bushes by the roadside, but Jock 
Barefoot took it all as a matter of course. 

“The wheatears are leaving the moor for winter 
and the gypsies always go when they do,” he told her. 

Well, to be sure, the Gypsy Dingle would be no 
better winter home for them than the Fairy Glen for 
Jock, and now that she had thought of this the little 
girl’s spirits rose again. By the time they reached the 
Laird’s gate she was full of talk and laughter. 

“Look, Jock,” she said as they went in, “the bonny 
tree has never missed the branch you broke.” 

“Broke?” cried Jock indignantly. “I did no such 
thing and I don’t care who says I did. I picked it up 
from that very spot—” 

“But if you did not break it for what did you think 
the Laird was angry?” interrupted Kirsty in astonish¬ 
ment. 

“I was thinking it was my whistling he did not 
like,” said Jock, sitting down under the tree to put on 
his boots. “I could not make out all his talk but it was 
whistling that he spoke the loudest.” 


JOCK BAREFOOT 173 

Kirsty could not wait to tell the Laird this. Even 
though Jock had on only one boot he must come, come 
that very minute. 

“I’m glad you are back before he found it out,” 
she cried as she pulled him after her to the house, 
“else he would have broken his heart.” 

At the door of the great house they met Andrew 
MacAndrew MacPherson but he was too recently 
wakened from an afternoon nap to recognize them at 
first. 

“If you want anything of the Laird,” he said, “it’s 
no time to ask. He’s quiet and I’ll not be having him 
fashed.” Then, throwing his hands above his head, 
he began to cry, “The laddie! The laddie! He’s back. 
Jock Barefoot’s come home and there’ll be no more 
carrying and fetching for Andrew MacAndrew.” 

The Laird who had been sitting quietly in his 
room, wondering if he might not learn from Kirsty 
how Crippled Dick liked his chair, heard the ado and 
came out to make more stir by calling. 

“What is all this noise I’d like to know.” 

“The laddie! The LADDIE!” shouted the stew¬ 
ard. “Have you no eyes to see?” 

“It’s Jock Barefoot,” explained Kirsty, keeping fast 
hold of her companion. “He did not break the branch 
but he’s forgiven you. I’m telling you for he doesn’t 


174 JOCK BAREFOOT 

know how to say it for himself.” Just what happened 
next nobody could ever positively tell. 

“We were so carried away with joy that we did not 
know what we were about,” Kirsty always said, but 
Andrew MacAndrew would have it that they caught 
hold of hands, Laird and all, and danced around like 
daft folks to the tune of “Rantie, cantie, rollicking 
rantie,” or something just as lively. 

This, however, is certain, when Jock’s story and 
Kirsty’s part in it had been reviewed from start to 
finish the Laird made a proposal that took his hear¬ 
ers’ breath away. 

“How would you like,” he asked Jock Barefoot, 
“to live in this great house and be company for An¬ 
drew MacAndrew MacPherson and me and, maybe, 
have Shep for you own doggie?” 

The steward opened his mouth so wide that it is 
a wonder he ever got it closed again, and Kirsty ex¬ 
pected nothing less than that Jock would dart out of 
the door and run away for good and all. But to her 
surprise he appeared quite willing to consider the 
matter. 

“Could I play whiles with Robin Mucklewraith 
and Jamie Ferguson and Davy Davit?” he asked. 
“And go sometimes to my own castle?” 

“To be sure,” said the Laird. “I played in just 



They caught hold of hands and danced around. 









176 JOCK BAREFOOT 

such a place when I was a laddie, though this may be 
hard for you to believe because I am old now and you 
are young.” 

Andrew MacAndrew, who was eager for the ar¬ 
rangement, frowned and shook his head to warn the 
laddie to have done with his talking, but Jock went 
on as boldly as if he had never run away for fear of 
the Laird. 

“And shall I have leave to go to see Crippled Dick 
and Kirsty and to help Granny Blair?” 

The Laird was too pleased with his plan to be im¬ 
patient. 

“You shall go to your friends and they shall come 
to you,” he promised. “And the more you are at the 
minister’s house the better you’ll be,” he added, to 
Kirsty’s great satisfaction. 

“Well, then,” said Jock, “I’ll stay if you’ll not be 
making me wear shoon—” 

“Except on the Sabbath,” cried Kirsty. “Every¬ 
body must wear shoes on the Sabbath.” 

“I’ll wear them on a Sabbath,” agreed Jock Bare¬ 
foot and the bargain was made. 

Nothing would do the Laird then but that the four 
of them, for Andrew MacAndrew would not hear to 
being left behind, must ride to tell the good news. 
First they went to the Manse where the minister was 


JOCK BAREFOOT 177 

waiting to hear, for he had guessed Kirsty’s secret and 
had long known the Laird’s plan. Then they went to 
Crippled Dick’s house, and so on, till everybody in 
the village knew that Jock Barefoot had come home 
and was to be the Laird’s boy. 

“But I’ll beat you at marbles just the same,” threat¬ 
ened Robin Mucklewraith. “You’ll see if I don’t.” 

This was a challenge that could not be borne with¬ 
out immediate settlement. The Laird’s carriage was 
stopped and Jock Barefoot got out for such a game 
as was never seen before. The Laird and Kirsty and 
the steward stood by to watch and the Laird’s big voice 
boomed out impartially, “Well done, Robin Muckle¬ 
wraith! Well done, Jock Barefoot!” And came in at 
the end to say triumphantly, “We put it over you this 
time, Robin, and fairly, but we’ll play you again.” 















































































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